


so take those lyrics serious (and sing your life away)

by KrasneTigritsa



Category: Original Work
Genre: 603 is a grumpy sweetheart, Blatant overuse of the words ‘hell’ and ‘kid’, CATHOLICS IN SPACE, Catholic Character, Catholicism, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Light Of The Stars AU, Mercyfic, No Romance, No Sex, No Slash, No editing we die like mne, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Slavery, Space Opera, Spaceships, in which i am my own fandom, mentions of general unpleasantness but nothing in realtime, mild swearing, people helping each other, restoration of humanity, slavefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:25:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrasneTigritsa/pseuds/KrasneTigritsa
Summary: 603 is, in the eyes of the law, less than human. Born out of a tube and trained as a soldier, he's fought hard for his freedom; but even the vastness of space with all its stars can become lonely for someone with no place in any world.Caius is a slave. Disfigured and no longer fit for brothel work, he's unsure what to expect of the half-human creature that, for some strange reason, has bought him. Still, it's nice to not be the only one with scars for once.





	1. Open Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> *cracks knuckles* okay. so. I've fallen into a deep pit of slavefic and I can't seem to get out. The thing I love about slavefic is the aspect of healing, the themes of humanity and dignity and unexpected kindness, but I haven't found a ton of fic that really focuses on that, as opposed to using the whole setup as a kink or a lead-in to romance--which can still be written really beautifully, but it's made me burn with the urge to write a little fic of my own. thus, this craziness. There's some grossness ahead, since the world of this fic is not a pretty one, but I'll be as gentle with it as possible, since that's not what the story is about.
> 
> 603 is a character I'd developed previously for a novel called Light Of The Stars (which I'm still working on), and Caius is original to this story. I'll be writing as I go and updating as I can, so we'll all be getting to know each other at a fairly easy pace (though hopefully not a glacial one) :)
> 
> title from 'sillyworld' by Stone Sour.

Caius sat on the edge of the bed as he'd been ordered, shivering silently, as his new master seems to be rummaging in his bag. What for, Caius can't imagine; the brothel provides their own generous selection of whips, shackles, oils and other toys. They're all relatively mild, though, or so he's heard. The brothel doesn't want any of their pets to suffer permanent damage. 

Not that that concern applies to him anymore, or that the brothel could step in and stop it even if it did. He doesn't belong to them anymore. Perhaps his new master doesn't share in the brothel's idea of gentleness. 

He seems to find what he's been looking for, turning back to face him, and Caius keeps his eyes averted, catching nothing of the man save the lower half of his coat, unbuckled and hanging loose, and the rough brown fabric of his breeches. His legs have an inhuman bent to them; bowed, like a dog's. He's not a man, Caius reminds himself; he's a synth: half human, half animal. He doesn't know what that means for him; so far, humans have proved bad enough. 

"Turn around," the master says, and Caius spins, getting on his hands and knees, head bent to the mattress and a sob caught in his dry throat. The worst ones, the clients he always dreads, are like this; clipped orders and no inflection. He has to wait on their every word, praying to Sykalis all the while that he doesn't get it wrong. Getting it right hurts more than enough already. 

"No."

Caius feels his heart drop to his stomach. Wrong, right at the beginning. He can't afford this. He's not even begun to heal from the  _last_ time; if he's beaten again, he'll die. 

"Just--like this." There's no abject anger in the master's voice, just a little frustration. There's a hand on Caius's shoulder, and he recoils from it without thinking. It stays there, warm and gentle, but insistent all the same as it pulls him back, guiding him to sit cautiously on his haunches. He's not sure what the position is  _for_ , but he's not being beaten yet. Perhaps the synth doesn't want to waste the time, just now, and punishment will come later. In any case, he's grateful for the respite. 

"There. Good. I'll be putting some ointment on your back, now. It'll sting." 

Caius stiffens. He doesn't want anything touching his back, not now, not until the open cuts have at least started to close, but it's not as though he gets a say. Eyes closed, he prepared for burning pain. The gel that the master begins to liberally apply over his shoulders doesn't disappoint. He sucks in a breath, managing to stay mostly quiet as his back is set on fire--but, after a moment, the pain fades, leaving him numb. Impossibly, blessedly numb. It's a healing ointment, he realizes with a sense of wonder, something to take the pain away. He shudders under the synth's touch, which is surprisingly gentle. Quite suddenly, he's glad that the brothel decided he was useless, glad that they set him out for sale in the back alley cages, and more than anything, glad that this synth stopped and took notice of him on his way inside the brothel. This master is  _kind._ The synth can beat him all he likes, starve and ridicule him, he doesn't care. He'll take it as well as he knows how, if only he can keep belonging to a master who would think to give him this blessed moment of freedom from pain. 

As if the ointment wasn't kindness enough, his back is wrapped in bandages. 

"I'll do your feet, now," the master says. Caius can't hold back a whimper as the burning gel touches the torn soles of his feet, but he doesn't struggle, and when the numbness comes it's as though he's been separated from his body. He feels ready to float away, and he wavers, ready to fall over as the master wraps his feet, too. He manages to stay upright, though, as the master makes his rounds over the rest of Caius's injuries, even the little ones he'd almost forgotten about. The shackle-galls on his wrists, the burn marks on his chest, the cuts from the cane on the backs of his thighs. When the synth, squatting awkwardly in front of him on the rumpled bed, finally gives a sigh and sits back on his oddly-shaped legs as though to declare he is done, Caius is all but completely wrapped in bandages. It's the most covering he's worn since he arrived at the brothel, years ago. 

"Any other horrifying injuries I should know about?" the master asks, and Caius, reveling in the glorious numbness, begins to shake his head before he remembers. 

"I'm torn," he ventures. "From the last time I was used." 

The synth is silent, and Caius struggles to stay awake, hoping that the information isn't new. The brothel guards should have informed his new master of that before the purchase, but Caius had been too busy wondering what he could possibly be being bought for to remember. 

"Ah," his master says, and he doesn't  _sound_ angry. "Not much I can do about that, I'm afraid." 

Nothing, except for refraining to use his new slave for the next couple of weeks. Caius knows it would be too much to ask, though; and right now, he can't even muster any resentment for it. Not when the synth has gone to so much trouble to help everything else heal. 

That thought reminds him of his place, and pulls him back from the brink of sleep yet again. He's been given something; he has to express gratitude. He fights through the sleep-heavy haze, trying to find the right words. 

"How do you want me, Master?" he asks, flinching at his own sleep-slurred tone, and hoping that punishment for that will be delayed, too. It is. The hand finds his shoulder again, rough with calluses but gentle, pushing him lightly to the mattress. 

"Lie down. Get some sleep." 

Too tired to be confused, Caius is all too happy to oblige. 

*   *   *

There was a  _wall_ of  _whips._ Whips, and chains, and...other things. Suffice to say, the shackles were probably the least offensive item in the lot. 603 had been purposefully ignoring the wall while the boy was awake, but now, he can't help but stare. What would anyone even want with all this, outside of a torture chamber? Who could possibly derive pleasure from inflicting pain? The two were opposites. They weren't supposed to be complementary. 

Then again, what did he know? He wasn't even human. Thank God for that, at least. 

With a sigh, he turned back to the boy. This was not exactly how he'd been planning on spending his profits from his last venture when he'd set a course for StarPort 13's highest-class affordable brothel, but he supposed he should thank God for that too. No filth to trouble his conscience when he left this port behind, and no heavy sadness in Father Arnulf's voice after he heard his confession. 

The wall of whips was still there. His stomach twisted as he thought again of the boy's wounds, his fear, of how damn easy it had been to buy him. 

Oh, he hadn't satisfied any immoral lusts, for sure, but there was filth in this all the same, and he wasn't certain that none of it had landed on him. Damn. He needed to talk to a priest. 

Still, he thought again of the evening he'd had in mind--an hour or so with the brothel's prettiest girl, a cold-mattress night back aboard his own ship, half basking in the pleasure and  fighting back the creeping, sinking conviction of yet another sin, yet another failure. No, this wasn't what he planned, but it's better. The boy would be company, someone to talk to, and he was someone 603 could protect, and feed, and let heal. The kid deserved that much, and it was something 603 could give. 

With one last hateful glance at the wall, 603 stirred himself, climbing cautiously into the bed beside the boy, taking great care not to rouse him. The bed was soft, and 603 is worn out, mind and body. He falls asleep in the space of a thought. 

 


	2. Nameless Fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which proper introductions are exchanged, Caius is surprised, and 603 takes off his coat--though not necessarily in that order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for reading! I've been having a ton of fun with this fic, and I'm really happy that other people seem to be enjoying it too <3

Caius listens. There's steady breathing beside him, and quietness all around--the odd, muffled quiet of a morning bedchamber. His new master is not awake yet, which is good. He won't have to punish Caius for laziness, at least. 

His back aches and stings as he drags himself from the bed, an uncomfortable reminder of what he has coming. He'd misinterpreted orders last night, been less enthusiastic about coupling than he could have been, slurred his speech. The night was a blur of aimless fear, and he has a vague recollection of feeling utterly unhinged, which never bodes well for him. He never even thanked the synth for tending to his wounds. 

Punishment is coming, and it will hurt, but he does not think this master will be truly cruel. And if he is good, and accepts it, it will go better. 

On his knees both out of respect and to salvage the soles of his feet, he shuffles around the bed, within easy reach of the still-sleeping synth, and readies himself to wait.  

While he does, he takes the rare opportunity to study his master's face. It's his first time seeing above the synth's collarbone, and he's surprised by it. The master's face is narrow without being weaselly, and...soft, somehow, in spite of its sharp edges, with skin the color of bitter honey and dark brown, nearly-black hair.

The master makes a low, almost animal sound deep in his throat, and the growl makes Caius snap his gaze back down to the floor, where it belongs. The synth stretches with a yawn and a groan, then swings his legs out over the bed, making a very human noise of surprise when they collide with Caius's head. 

"Argh. Sorry. How long have you been there?" 

"A few minutes, master." 

"Hnngh," his new master replies eloquently, shoving himself off the bed. Caius waits, muscles forcibly relaxed, fear buried under a mental barrage of acceptance, for the declaration of punishment, for his master to wander over and take his pick from the instruments on the far wall. He hopes--and has some confidence--that the man will not strike him anywhere he's already wounded; it would make no sense to bandage his back just to whip it raw again. Still, the thought of being struck at all is coiling a snake of cowardly fear tighter and tighter in his belly, and he wishes that it was over with already. 

As far as he can tell, the synth doesn't even glance at the wall. 

"Can you stand?" 

It sounds like a question, but he doesn't risk trying to answer with anything but obedience. He struggles to his feet, but one touch of his torn soles on the soft carpet has him yelping, vision gone white with flaring pain. He'd almost forgotten. He's not able to stay upright, and is about to land hard on his knees when the synth catches him, lowering him gently back to the floor. If the master wants him punished, it would be easy, Caius thinks, simply to order him to stand--stay on his feet for one minute, or ten.

He would rather be beaten. 

"I--I don't think I can, master. I'm sorry, I can--I can try again--" 

"Hell, kid,  _no._ No trying again, got it?  _Hell._ I'm sorry I asked." 

"I'm sorry." 

The synth is still holding his shoulders, and he gives a brief, reassuring rub there with his thumb before letting go. 

"It's okay, kid. Just don't hurt yourself." 

 _no hurting yourself,_ Caius thinks, filing the piece of information away almost automatically. As far as orders go, it doesn't sound too difficult to follow. 

"Alrighty, then. You ready to get out of this junkhole?" 

"Yes,  _sir_ ," Caius says, immediately freezing at his own tone. The emphasis was unnecessary. The implied opinion was unnecessary. The synth stilled for a moment, looking at him, then chuckled. 

"That's the spirit," he finally said, tone more appreciative than angry, and somewhat counterintuitively, shrugged off his coat. Caius flinched, remembering that his mistakes of the day before had yet to be paid for, and waited for the master to take one of the tools off its peg on the wall.

To his surprise, he found the long coat draped over his shoulders, warm and thick and overlarge. It felt oddly safe, like armor. 

" _Master_ ," he said, unsure of what being covered meant, but enjoying it all the same. Thanks stuck in his throat, half-afraid that the gift would be snatched away the moment it was acknowledged. 

"There," the synth said, not waiting for thanks. Unexpectedly, he knelt, spinning around so that Caius found himself staring at his master's back. He blinked. 

"Wrap your arms around my neck, kid. I'll carry you." 

Reflexively, Caius was already reaching his arms up to obey when the implications of that hit him. His  _master_ was carrying  _him._ Being weighed down, inconvenienced, by  _him._

"Master, I--I can--" but he couldn't walk, he really couldn't, and now he was not only disobeying a direct order, he was daring to argue it, and it would be a dark, dark day when the synth finally got around to punishing him for this. 

"You're not gonna break my back," the master said, with merciful good humor. Feeling the wrongness of this in his very bones, Caius closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around the synth's neck. 

*   *   *

 _Hell_ , 603 thought for what had to be the 89th time that morning. Leaning against his back like he was scared 603'd bite him, the kid felt fragile as a twig. He could feel the boy's ribs through the cloth of his shirt, and not even the Synthomorph Corps had treated their product like this. This kid was fully human. Who in their right mind would treat a human like this? 

Cautiously, he reached back and found the kid's knees, supporting them as he stood up. The kid hissed softly, and 603 grimaced in sympathy, but managed not to feel too guilty. There was no way they were gonna make it back to the  _Albatross_ without it hurting the kid, not with the number that'd been done on him. 

Come to think of it, he probably should stop just calling him 'kid'. 

"Hey." he bumped the boy lightly with his shoulder. "What's your name?"

"I'm called Caius, Master, but I'll answer to whatever pleases you." 

"Caius," 603 repeats easily, ignoring the rest of the kid's--Caius's--statement. Nobody was actually okay with having their name changed willy-nilly, anymore than anyone just naturally crawled everywhere on their knees or never dared to look at anything but the carpet or apologized for not being able to stand on mangled feet. 603 knew abused terror when he saw it. Hopefully, Caius would grow out of it. 

"I'm 603." 

A name for a name. Fair enough. He felt the kid go still against his back, either from surprise or some nameless fear, and ignored it, stepping out of the cursed room with its overlarge bed and disgusting wall. It was time to go back to his ship, and hopefully, a little sanity. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again! The next chapter is mostly written already, so it should be up soonish as long as Life doesn't get in the way :)
> 
> Also, this is a first draft, so if y'all are spotting any mistakes/lack of continuity/stuff that just plain sounds wrong, please don't hesitate to let me know! I'll be doing a full edit once it's all written out, so any tips are more than welcome <3


	3. New Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Concerning StarPort 13, The Albatross, and a kitchen table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frick, y'all are awesome. I love you.

603 gets a few odd looks, walking through the open streets of StarPort 13's markets. A few levels up, in the glittering shops and crime-less avenues that was the territory of nobles and very successful businessmen, he might have received looks of disgust; a few levels lower, and perhaps a synth carrying a naked, battered human slave would be considered a matter of course. 

On no level, whatever assumptions people made, would it be considered strictly illegal. Caius's bruised and bloody state was as above-board and legal as terminating a malfunctioning synth. 

The boy's head was resting on his shoulder, heavy and human and alive, and 603 thought, not for the first time, that he hated Galactic Law. It was no guard against lawlessness. 

"Just a little farther," he said over his shoulder. Caius wasn't complaining about the walk--far from it, he was perfectly silent--but it couldn't be comfortable for him. And to be honest, 603 needed the reassurance as well. He was no stranger to odd looks, but he did not care for them either. The boy was weak and hurting, and 603 felt his vulnerability as though it were his own. They would both be better off back at his ship. 

*   *   *

Caius was utterly lost. He hadn't ever ventured outside the brothel since he'd been sold to it, and it was...overwhelming. The colors alone--bright, rich colors, so unlike the dusky pinks and blacks of the brothel--were enough to make his heart race. The air was cooler, too, with less breath and musk in it, and it made him want to gorge his lungs with it. 

603 wove them both expertly through the crowd, until the market was left behind and the docks stretched out, an impossible mass of space, before them. Caius felt his breath catch in his throat. 

He could see the stars. 

Beyond the hordes of ships docked, being loaded or unloaded or repaired or quarantined, the wide bubble of synthetic atmosphere was transparent, like a great concave ceiling of glass. Beyond it, the vastness of space--rich in shades of purple and green and indigo, dotted with fiery flecks of starlight. 

It was beautiful. 

"Almost there," 603 said, for probably the fifth time. He sounded more harried every time he said it, and Caius wondered if the effort of carrying him was proving troublesome. He shrunk against the synth's back, trying to make himself less of a burden as 603 kept talking. 

"See that glorious little rustbucket over yonder? That's home. Some idiot, not me, named her the  _Albatross_ , and some other idiot painted the name on right above a picture of what the books of species tell me is a duck. She's ugly as hell, but she'll carry you clean across the galaxy on half-rations and a tankful of tiger piss, and she's mine." 

There's a grin in his voice as he talks, an honest, loving one, and Caius--who had torn his gaze from the stars in order to star hopelessly at the vast armada of indistinguishable ships--stopped trying to pick out the rustbucket with  _Albatross_ printed on the side and stared instead at the back of his master's head. the words struck him oddly, sharply, with double-edged intent. It wasn't beauty his master valued, but resilience. There was hope in that, at least; the brothel had counted ugliness the same as worthlessness. Hope, and a little bit of fear. Caius can  _try_ to be resilient. He will try. But he's not certain he'll be able to manage...trekking across the galaxy on half-rations and tiger piss. 

All the ships look the same to him, and he gives up on trying to find the right one, looking up instead, into the silent heavens. If the galaxy looks like that, maybe it'll be worth it. 

*   *   *

The  _Albatross_ does not fit her name, and 603 knows it. He'd looked the bird up shortly after finding out the image on her side was of a duck, and had laughed out loud when he'd seen the earth species for which she'd been named, white and serene and graceful. The  _Albatross_ looked, quite honestly, like a renovated trash shuttle, however much her previous owner had assured him she wasn't. 

"Hold on," he told Caius, shifting his grip on the boy slightly to free one hand and dig for the screwdriver he kept in his bag. He found it after a few moments, and stabbed the ship's side with it, prying free the rusty plate that covered the ship's keypad. It glowed blue, only glitching once as the outline of a hand began to flash on the screen. He pressed his palm to it. It was unresponsive for a moment, then gave an irritated beep and flashed red. 603 snorted, cursing under his breath and rubbing his palm on his breeches, then pressing it to the screen again. This time the beep was fatalistic, and 603 was admitted into his own ship with the welcoming zither of a sliding door. 

*   *   *

Something withered in Caius's chest when the door closed behind him. The air inside the ship was stale; it was too metallic and dusty to remind him of the brothel, but so much more confined than the free air of the StarPort. He cursed his own ingratitude as soon as it arose. He was bandaged, and safe, and in the hands of a master who had yet to raise hand or voice to him. He had no right to hope for more. 

They walked down a short hallway to another door, with another sensor pad. This one accepted 603's handprint without argument, and Caius felt a sense of relief. The less inconvenience his master suffered, the better the synth's mood would be, and the better Caius himself would fare. 

Another door was shut behind them, and Caius tried to ignore the spike of panic that shot through him. He took a breath, wincing as it shuddered through his chest. He needed to be resilient. Sounding as though he was about to break down in tears was not resilient. 

"You okay up there, kid?"

"I'm fine. I'm--good." The walls are too close, and getting closer. 

"Not much farther."

_be resilient be resilient be resilient_

The mantra gets him through the hallway, into a slightly more open space where the walls no longer feel as though they're going to crush him. He closes his eyes, relief and something that feels oddly like victory coursing through his veins. 

"Welcome to the kitchen. I'll set you down, now," 603 says, and it's a relief, because Caius has still not shaken the feeling of wrongness from having to ride on his master's shoulders, and it's disappointing, because 603's back is warm and solid and strangely safe. But most of all, it's a surprise, because his master sets him down at the table, in a chair. 

"There we are," he says, calm as someone with no notion of just how odd of a thing they've done, and moves away with, "Now food. You like potatoes, kid?"

Caius doesn't move for a moment, glued to the place he's been set in, staring at the tabletop, hands fisted in the material of his master's coat. His master's coat, which he's wearing, as he sits at his master's table, in a chair, and he's probably bleeding on something, getting it dirty, he can't--

_"oh, look. think you're human, don't you? you're a pet, boy. a pet, like a dog. and dogs don't get to sit on the furniture, do they? not without consequences."_

It's not until his knees clang against the metal floor, sounding overloud to his ears and jarring his teeth in his head, that he realizes he's even moved. the angle of everything is more comforting--familiar--but it doesn't do much to calm him. 603 has turned around, feet angled towards him and silent, which means he's probably staring. Caius bows his head lower, half in respect, half to silence the image in his head of his master's soft-edged face twisting hard in anger. He shuts his eyes, but the image doesn't go away, and if only the brothel had had his tear ducts removed when they'd planned instead of trying to be merciful, because not one of the tricks the mistress had taught him was quelling the prickling behind his eyelids. 

"Hey," 603 says, and Caius snaps his eyes open to see a hand held out to him, palm up, and he curses himself for an idiot. His grip on the coat is hard to break, but he manages, pulling it off his shoulders and all but shoving it at the synth, eager to prove that he's not disobedient, he's really not. Knowing that he's earned whatever comes next doesn't make him any less afraid. 

"What..." 603 lifts the jacket up, probably looking it over to make sure Caius hasn't dirtied it, and finally lets it drop. "Hey," he says, and kneels, sweeping the coat up and around Caius's shoulders again. "You keep this for now, all right? I don't want you freezing on me." 

The material is just as warm and solid as before. Caius curls his fingers into it, struggling to reconcile 603's tone with what's happened, his gentleness with the feeling of dread in his own chest. 

"I'm gonna pick you up and put you in the chair again, all right? Can't be eating off the floor." 

He can, actually, and _has_ , but he had neither the strength nor the desire to argue. He's silent as 603 puts him back, rubs his shoulder lightly, and walks away again. 

"So. Potatoes," the synth announces, beginning to busy himself in the kitchen, and Caius just keeps staring, mind oddly distant from his body, at the metallic tabletop with its rivers of tarnish and flecks of rust. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really just want to give Caius a hug. And a stable mental state. And his own spaceship. But, all in due time, I guess. 
> 
> Next chapter is mostly done, so it should be up soon!


	4. Silence And Potatoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a pot boils over and Caius follows suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello awesome people, have some angst! <3 <3
> 
> Just a warning, there's some intrusive thoughts of suicide and a panic attack in this chapter. (sorry).

Caius is jumpier than 603 had anticipated. Frightened to the point where he's beginning to wonder if he should call the kid on it, talk with him to find out what it is that's scaring him. 

He'd followed that idea all of two feet down its inevitable trail before executing a perfect mental about-face and fleeing to more comfortable territory. Namely, food. Which was going to be boiled potatoes and freeze-dried Cantha fruit tonight, because the shipment of rations he ordered as soon as he'd docked wasn't due to arrive until tomorrow. In his own defense, he hadn't planned on having guests. 

He's set the Cantha fruit to rehydrate and peeled about two potatoes when a voice surprises him. 

"I can--I can help?" 

He turns around to find Caius, thankfully still sitting at the table and apparently addressing the floor. He looks at the top of the kid's head in surprise, then looks at his task. Shrugs. 

"Sure." 

He digs for an extra knife, scoops up a couple of potatoes, and brings them to the table. Caius stares at the floor, not making a move to pick them up, and 603 thought with belated clarity that leaving the kid unattended near a knife might not be the best idea. Still, taking it away now and leaving him with nothing to do...it helps, having something to use your hands for. Something to make you feel a little less like a machine stored away for later use. 

Cautiously, he goes back for his own knife and the rest of the potatoes, setting them down beside Caius's with a dull thump and settling himself in the other chair, getting quietly back to work. Caius still hasn't moved, but that's all right. He'd been talking, and doesn't seem overtly terrified, and even with a knife within easy reach he hasn't tried to stab anyone. It's far better than 603 had been, in the early days. He'll take what he can get. 

The silence settles, comforting, around them both. 

603 loses himself in the easy work, watching curls of bicolored skin fall to the table until the battle-ready tightness of his spine begins to relax, the half-paranoid acuteness of his senses begins to blur, no longer taking in every creak of the ship's walls, every muffled voice shouting from outside. 

He still notices the tiny, hesitant flash of motion as Caius picks up the knife; and he glances up to find the boy working with slow, fumbling movements on one of the potatoes, eyes flicking up in quick, covert glances to check his work against 603's. 

603 feels his remaining tension ease. Home, work, and food, he thinks; they cure everything. 

"Good job," he offers, and catches the way Caius almost-- _almost_ \--looks up at him. He grins. This is going well. 

*   *   *

It was not going well. Caius kept...freezing up. It wasn't the kind brought on by fear, though he's seen that that before. Fear doesn't affect him like that; fear makes him move. It's saved him before--snapped him into following an order before his conscious mind could fully comprehend it--and it's caused him trouble, too, made him move away, or struggle, or try to run. 

This, though, is new. He can't move because he doesn't know how he's supposed to move, what he's supposed to do, or how he's supposed to react when he's handed a _knife,_ of all things. 

When he's done being frozen, he manages to peel the skin from one potato. By the time he's finished with that, his master has made quick work of the whole pile of them.

"Nice work," 603 says, in the same tone as he'd said 'good job,' and Caius can't help but wonder if it's sarcasm. 

The potatoes are set on the stove to boil, and 603 brushes his hands off on his breeches. The potato has made Caius's hands sticky and grainy-feeling, but there is nowhere he dares clean them, and so he holds them, cupped together so as not to dirty anything, in his lap. 

"I'll be back in a second, kid. Yell if that pot starts to boil over." 

And like that, the master is gone through one of the zithering doors, and the sound as the door closes shoots so much fear into Caius's chest that he doesn't have any left over to worry over what the synth is going away for. 

He knows where the knives are. It's an odd, drifting, ethereal thought, until suddenly it isn't. They're not that far away. He could get one easily enough. He's been ordered not to hurt himself, but 603 wouldn't get here in time to stop him, and--

He cuts off his own train of thought, sucking in a few rapid breaths. It's a stupid idea, a hateful one. He doesn't want to die. He  _doesn't_. He closes his eyes and tries to block out the image of the walls slowly closing in on him. 

Something slams down hard on the table, and Caius's eyes snap open. The walls are a respectable distance away. He's on the floor again, and 603 is swearing as he tries to get the hissing, bubbling pot of potatoes off the stove. 

His fault. he was supposed to be watching. Not thinking about knives. Not...doing whatever it was that had made him lose himself long enough for the potatoes to begin boiling and turn into the clanging, steaming mess they are now. He starts shuffling forward on his knees. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Master, I can fix it, I can--"

But he's hardly moved a foot by the time that 603 has gotten the pot off the stove and, save for a faint and steadily fading burbling, quiet. There's nothing for Caius to do, and he stops, hand outstretched. Frozen again. 

603 swears again, softly, and sticks his fingers in his mouth with a dark expression. His eyes flick to Caius's, meeting his gaze for a moment, and Caius's stomach drops. He touches his forehead to the floor, offering his hands, and tries to satisfy his lung's sudden burning need for air. 

This is not misunderstanding an order, or slurring his words, or any of the other small offenses which this master seems inclined almost to ignore. This is something for which Caius cannot even forgive himself. To be stupid enough to disobey the very simple order to  _watch_ , and then to meet the synth's eyes like an equal--603 has been burned, hurt because of his laziness, and then disrespected on top of it. Even if the synth still doesn't beat him, there are a thousand other ways to make Caius suffer for what he's done. 

And that is only if he doesn't just kill Caius outright. So far, he knows he's proven nothing but useless, and he can't have been very expensive. Less expensive, at any rate, than the cost of feeding him will prove; the synth could easily choose to cut his losses now. Or sell him. 

He wants to live, and he doesn't want to be hurt, and he doesn't want to be sold, but he is well aware that nothing is governed by his wants. 

The world is silent above him, and the silence is worse that being alone. It's being ignored, it's the cage in the center of the slave quarters where everyone could see but no one  _looked_ at you, where you could scream your lungs bloody but no one so much as told you to shut up. He can't stand the silence, so selfishly, he breaks it. 

"Please, Master," he says, and he's not sure what he's begging for.  _don't hurt me. don't hate me. don't leave me alone in a room with knives again._ "Please, I know that--what I've done--I've--whatever punishment you see fit, I will bear it, but I can do better, I can be better, please--" 

And those words are all wrong. It's not what he's done, it's what he hasn't done; and his master does not need his consent, or his promises, he needs a slave who will be resilient, who will be useful, who won't freeze and disobey him at every turn.

"Hey." There's a hand on his shoulder, not grasping or dragging or hitting, just there. "Kid. Caius. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? You're alright." 

But selling him is not _hurting,_ and having him locked alone in a tight, dark room is not  _hurting_ , and never addressing him again is not  _hurting,_ and Caius can't catch his breath anymore, and all the walls are closing in on him. He doesn't need the knife, he thinks; he'll suffocate right here, all by himself, with no hangman's rope to help him along. 

603 curses again. Arms are wrapped around him, picking up. He's being carried to the little dark room, to the cage, and he's not going to be talked to again and the things the lurk just behind his thoughts will have him all to themselves. He sobs breathlessly against 603's chest, trying to absorb some of the warmth, some of the solidness, as the synth curses and doors zither open and shut, open and shut. 

And then the air is cooler all around them, and 603 is talking in a rough, ragged voice. 

"Look up. Damn it, kid, look  _up_." 

Caius's obedience is automatic, and a sob catches suddenly in his throat. 

Stars. 

There's no ceiling anymore. No walls. Nothing above him but space and stars, with the latent clamor of the StarPort to fight off the silence. Caius heaves breath after breath of the cool, oil-scented air, and 603 holds him close until his breathing settles enough to allow him to cry. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the next chapter is written, but I'm not overly sure about it (it's necessary to the story, but also slightly out of the comfortable groove I've gotten into with these chapters), and I'm going to try and write a chapter or two ahead of it before posting just so I don't leave y'all with a bit of plotty setup and disappear into the ether :) 
> 
> Also, thank you to everyone for the awesome feedback! You're all ridiculously encouraging <3


	5. Not A Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Caius gets some well-deserved rest and 603 reaches out to an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello awesome people!
> 
> This chapter has some blatant Christianity in it. I'm Christian myself (which is no assurance of theological accuracy, btw) but not Catholic like 603 is, so hopefully it's all aboveboard and accurate. Most of my research in the area comes from passing conversations with Catholic friends and not...well...actual research, so please tell me if you're finding anything that's wrong or misrepresented!
> 
> There are also some passing mentions of euthanasia in this chapter, and repeated referrals to panic attacks as 'malfunctioning', both thanks to 603's lovely upbringing and not intended to represent his actual beliefs on the matter.

It's not that 603 ever particularly liked Cantha fruit. It's sharp-tasting, too bitter, and if it didn't unavoidably come in the same shipments as the cherries he  _did_ like, he wouldn't have it on his ship at all. 

But, all the same--he's never had it taste chalky before. 

Caius had cried himself dry and then mercifully fallen asleep. It wasn't until 603 had gotten him back inside the ship and into a bed that he'd allowed the heavy weight to settle in his own stomach, the sense of blankness and old, old fears buzzing absently at the edge of every thought. 

He'd seen panic like that before, more than once. Blind, unreasoning, overpowering. Malfunctioning, the officers had called it--at least, they'd called it that when it happened to synths. Soldiers who malfunctioned were terminated. They were done for, worn out, no longer fit for service. 

He didn't know it happened to humans too. 

His bowl is empty, and he's been clinking his spoon against it for who knows how long, trying to scrounge another scoop of the food he's not able to taste. 

He shakes his head, getting up and letting both bowl and plate clatter in the sink. He considers leaving them to sit for a while--no one's forcing him to clean up after himself, not here--but then again, the whole kitchen is a mess, and he's been down this road before. Leave a mess alone, and it multiplied. Better to just fix it now. 

Besides, he knows what he has to do, after this, and he'd like to postpone it as long as possible. 

The kitchen is clean too soon for his liking. He stays there, wandering and straightening and brushing away imaginary crumbs for another ten minutes before cursing his own cowardice, shutting off the lights, and walking down the darkened hallway. His boots hit the metal-plated floor with a rhythmic clang-clank-clang that echoes against the smooth-sealed chamber doors on either side of the hallway, not so much breaking the silence and emphasizing it. The doors all look the same--it's hard to tell, sometimes, if the _Albatross_ was intended to carry passengers, personnel or prisoners--but he finds his own chambers easily enough. The berths are small and uniform, with a bed and a comm station and little else. They reminded 603 a little of the barracks he'd once been housed in; the familiarity shouldn't have been comforting, but somehow it was. 

He wasted another five minutes staring at the comm station before he shook his head. No point in delaying. 

"Call Arnulf," he instructed the dark screen, and received an image of a slowly pulsing orb of light. It brightened steadily with each pulse, before finally expanding to to wash the whole screen in a blaze of blinding white. 603 leaned back, squinting to save his eyes, and the screen slowly darkened again, resolving itself into the grainy image of a narrow face looking through a pair of holo-lenses in apparent consternation. 603 found himself grinning at the familiar face. 

"Father," he acknowledged the priest with a nod, and Arnulf blinked at him, then smiled wide. 

"Nathaniel, my son!" He cried, voice crackling through the comm with a vaguely unsettling delay. "It's been a long time. I've been worried for you." 

The words plucked at something deep within 603's chest, neither pleasant nor painful, but an old chord rarely felt, and some of the tension in his shoulders fell away. 

"And here I thought you told me worry was of the devil?" 

Arnulf snorted. "So it is. I stand rebuked." 

He didn't ask where 603 had been, or what he'd been doing. He never did, outside of confession; asked only rarely, even then. 

"You look like you've been studying," 603 offered. It was a safe guess; Arnulf was always studying. It was also another cleaning-the-kitchen, staring-at-the-screen moment; another delay of the inevitable.  _Father? I bought a slave boy from a brothel and I've terrified him out of his wits. Fix it._

"I have!" the priest exclaimed, looking down at the desk that was just out of the comm-cameras line of sight and flipping through the pages of his books excitedly. "The three main virtues, as put forth in first Corinthians thirteen. I'm starting with love. It's fascinating stuff, really; some of these revelations have got my heart racing. I've been reading--in Kierkegaard--the theory that love consists, at least partly, of  _seeing rightly._ Seeing people as they are, really. It's an interesting contrast to the commoner notion of seeing only the best in people; from what I understand, Kierkegaard is arguing that seeing only the best in people means  _loving_ only what is best in people, and is a failure to really love the person themselves at all."

It's easier to speak, somehow, when Arnulf isn't looking directly at him, when he's talking so enthusiastically about something that has nothing to do with 603 at all. 

"I went to a brothel again, Father." 

It's still hard when Arnulf looks up, the childish excitement gone from his face and a terrible sorrow there instead--something blank and heavy, as though he'd just shot the man through the chest. 

"Oh, Nathaniel," he says, "I'm sorry. Did you call to make con-"

"I'm not here for penance," 603 says, a little too quickly. "I didn't--well. I went in and spent the night, but not like that. I kept my boots on." 

And just like that, the light is back in Arnulf's eyes again. Confused, but hopeful, and not at all disbelieving. 603 was gladder than ever that the night hadn't passed as he'd planned. 

"They had cages outside. Used...used brothel slaves for sale. And there was this kid, Father, he can't be more than thirteen, and starved to look younger. And--I've seen beatings before, in the army. Bad ones. But I've never seen anything like the shape this boy was in--not off a battlefield, anyway." 

"Oh, Christ Jesus."

He is, for a moment, viciously glad at the pallor in Arnulf's face, the grave seriousness of his tone. Glad on Caius's behalf and his own, that the whole galaxy at least is not made up of people who would pass by the sight of those cages without a second thought. Still, he hesitates a second. Arnulf knows him, better than anyone. Knows his flaws, and his failures, how many he's killed and how many he's lain with and how much he's stolen and how often he's lied. He is not _good_. He cannot be for Caius what Arnulf once was for him. He knows it, but he doesn't want to hear Arnulf say it, because if Arnulf says it it will be true. 

"I bought him," he finishes, firmly, because however bad he might be, he's better than the brothel was. Better by lightyears. 

"Good!" Arnulf shouts, loud enough to make 603 jump. "And I hope you shot everyone in charge of that damned brothel, too!" he blinks at his own outburst of violence, and amends, "Well, I suppose I should be hoping for the salvation of their souls, too, but may God send them hell on earth first. Will the boy be alright?" 

"I don't think I'm going to be hoping for anyone's salvation, Father," 603 says, finally, "But I didn't shoot anyone, much as I wanted to. Took the kid home, instead. He's sleeping now. Name's Caius." 

"Do you think he'll heal?" 

There's something in the half-nervous voice, Arnulf's wide-eyed and obvious concern for a boy he's never met, his apparent and unfathomable trust that 603 will be able to take care of him, that relieves the last of the tension in 603's chest. It's odd, how much he forgets just who Arnulf is. The priest surprises him, every time; but he shouldn't be coming as a surprise anymore. He's just Arnulf, acting as Arnulf always has, in a way utterly at odds with the world that gave 603 the scars on his back and kept Caius in a cage. 

"His wounds should heal. Not without scars, though--that's why they were selling him in the first place, I think. Something about being disfigured." 

This earned a somewhat green look from Arnulf, and 603 apologized for the information with a brief grimace. 

"But...he's terrified, Father. Of me. Of everything. He managed to peel a potato, but then I left him to get some clothes and fresh bandages and when I came back, the pot was boiling over and he was somewhere else in his head. Came to to find me swearing because I tried to take it off the stove with my bare hands like an idiot, and he thought I--he--I didn't know humans malfunctioned, too." 

"He had a panic attack?" Arnulf asked, looking interested and not at all surprised. "That's normal, really, as far as I understand. Every sentient creature is liable to respond to panic when pushed beyond their limits, and not always in ways that make immediate sense. It's good you got him calmed down enough to sleep." 

He relays the information like it's obvious, something that 603 already should have known, and he supposes that he should have. 

"So he'll heal?" he asked. "Even from that?" 

Arnulf gave him a kind look. 

"You did."

603 frowned, the reminder an odd combination of encouragement and shame, and he didn't reply, caught up in thought for a moment. 

"And how about you?" Arnulf asked, and 603 was on the defense in a moment. 

"Like I said, Father. I'm not here for confession." 

"It's hardly a threat," Arnulf replied mildly. "But I wasn't trying to prompt you to one. As your friend and your priest, I've been worried for you. The brothel visits--"

"They're wrong. I know," 603 growled, not liking this subject at all. 

"True, but they're also a symptom of something deeper. Unless I'm much mistaken, you're not being driven there by some uncontrollable lust. Whatever it is you're so hungry for, my friend, you won't find it at a brothel. Trying to feed yourself that way is only poisoning you." 

"You're trying to tell me to pray more, aren't you?" 

Arnulf shrugged. "It's always good advice. It's God who is the Father, Nathaniel, not me, and only He can give you what you truly need." 

603 squinted, trying to picture the full ethereal force of a galactic God directed into keeping him away from brothels. It seemed a little ridiculous.

"Alright," he assented, weakly, and Arnulf nodded, taking the tenuous reply as the best he'd get for now. 

"You're always in my prayers as well, Nathaniel, and those of many saints besides." 

Which sounded like a lot of praying, really. God was probably sick of it by now. Still--

"Can you pray for Caius, too?" he asked, the words sounding odd in his mouth. Priestlike. 

"Of course. Would you like to pray with me?"

Something in 603 recoiled at the suggestion, but he couldn't really refuse. It was less painful than he feared, though, listening to Arnulf's poetic words on his and Caius's behalf, and even adding a few rough and unpracticed lines of his own. 

Arnulf had to return to his studies, after that, and 603 had nothing more to say. A few goodbyes later, and 603 found himself staring at a black screen once again. He looked around the small cell of a room, then shoved himself to his feet, trying to soften his steps on the hard metal floor as he wandered down the hall. The cockpit was dark, all the lights save the self-glowing dials and gauges shut off. The only true light came from outside, where the ship faced the synthosphere and all that lay beyond it. The starlight, dim as it was, was still enough to illumine the mattress and mass of blankets in the floor, and the still figure who lay between them, breathing. 

603 watched the boy for a moment. He didn't understand him. Couldn't, probably; though they had both been slaves, their slavery had been of such different kinds that it seemed impossible to compare them.

The boy didn't like chairs, or walls, or small spaces. He did like the stars. 

603 looked out into the openness of space. It used to terrify him. All that dead, unbreathable openness that threatened at every moment to suck him in and swallow him whole. In the first days, he'd just as soon have curled up in a box with his eyes closed than look at the stars. 

Caius, though, wasn't afraid of it at all. Seemed to be calmed, even, by its hugeness; so much so that 603 thought keeping him away from the sight of the stars might be some brand of cruelty. 

Thus, the mattress dragged into the cockpit. 603 stepped softly across the floor and settled into the battered pilot's chair, listening to Caius's breathing and staring out into the stars that was still just a little leery of, when he really thought about them. They seemed less likely to swallow him up, now--less likely to make him disappear into nothing--because of the boy breathing behind him. Caius was small, but he was solid--someone to protect, something to tie him down to solid ground. No longer alone, he could look into the galaxy without fear for the very first time. 

It was beautiful. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! <3 <3 the next chapter should be up soon :D


	6. Walls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which 603 rewraps some bandages and Caius begins to realize that his life may be changed for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws confetti* YAY CAIUS IS BACK!! I missed him. 
> 
> Also, y'all are fantastic and ridiculously encouraging, just in case I haven't mentioned that yet.
> 
> and also, this chapter has some non-explicit but kinda graphic mentions of Caius' life at the brothel. Not a huge part of anything, but I made myself feel a little sick writing it, so I thought a heads-up might be nice :) <3

Caius came slowly to wakefulness. The thing he laid upon was soft, and the blankets that covered him were thick and heavy. His breath hitched as he tried to draw it, caught halfway by the tearing pain in his back, then came quick and shallow as he saw where he was.

It was dark--night-dark, the ship's lights not merely dimmed but shut off completely. On the far wall, square screens glowed softly, providing a window that looked through to the stars. Caius's racing heart calmed a little at the sight. 

The numbness from the master's healing gel had finally worn off, the sharp sting and ache of his skin made worse by the fact that he'd almost grown used to not being in pain. He shifted himself to sit up, breath catching at every movement, and was surprised to find that his hands and feet weren't chained. At the brothel, upon the rare occasions punishment for one of his slips was not immediate, he had been kept chained up in a dark room to meet it. 

They'd never given him a mattress. Or blankets. They'd certainly never let him look at the stars. 

He knew his new master was kind, though. A knot of shame, hot and unfamiliar, twists in his stomach. The sharp, ugly things in his thoughts, the muzzy mindlessness and stupid panic that had led to his breaking down in tears are all gone now, and in their absence he can't imagine how he could have given in to any of them. It had been so stupid. 603 was kind, and had yet to ask anything of him that he shouldn't have been able to do with ease. This could have been going so well. Instead, he'd had to ruin it. 

He sat up all the way, gathering his knees underneath him with a wince--he'd crashed onto them hard enough to bruise, but that's his own fault--and bends forward, slowly so as not to re-open any of the cuts on his back. Oddly enough, the thought of punishment doesn't terrify him. He hates pain, but it's familiar. Inevitable. 

He remembers how 603 had carried him, held him, neither angry nor mocking when he cried, just warm and solid and  _there_. That, followed by this--a bed, and blankets, and a room that isn't all darkness--has him daring to hope that, at the very least, the synth doesn't mean to get rid of him. It's a comforting hope. 

"You awake, kid?" 

The fear is automatic, but manageable, equally mixed with surprise. He thought he was alone. He glances towards 603's voice--a black shadow between himself and the stars, low and flat-topped like the back of a chair. 

"Yes, Master. I'm awake." 

He's treading unsteadily, memories both shaming him and giving him a reason to hope, but long experience furnishing him with nothing but a pounding heart and a sense of dread as all-encompassing as the dark. 

"Feeling any better?" 

"Much, Master. Thank you."

There's a creak and a groan as 603 gets up, leaving the chair spinning lazily behind him, and Caius presses his forehead into the mattress, as perfect a picture of submission as he knows how to be. 603 strides over, kneels down in a rustle of fabric. When he speaks, his voice is close by. 

"Thought you sounded a little muffled," his master comments, giving no sign if Caius's position pleases him or not. "Can you sit up?"

He can, and he does, keeping his eyes properly low this time, but he can't help the catch in his breath. 

"Your bandages need re-doing," 603 notes, sounding contemplative. Caius suppresses a shiver, waiting for this to have a point. "So let's get that done, then. I'll carry you." 

*   *   *

The kid is stiff in his arms, still expecting to be hurt somehow, and 603 wants to run his own head into the wall. He needs to talk with the boy, but he's not sure how. It seems too early for talking, just yet; he wants to stick with what he knows, working with his hands. He can tie bandages, and make food, and let Caius rest and heal. That's what the kid needs right now, anyway; he's wounded and stick-thin and hollow-faced, and he shouldn't be worrying about kneeling and apologizing and being punished. He shouldn't be so afraid that he stops breathing.

But he is.

603 is not at all sure what he can say to help, but he's aware, as the silence continues, that he should say  _something._  

It's a relief when he finally reaches the door to the medbay. It zithers open easily, too-bright lights flicking on in a matter of seconds, and 603 winces, his eyes accustomed to the ship's night-dark halls. Caius tenses up in his arms. 

"I'm just gonna be changing your bandages. Nothing more."

Caius nods, but doesn't relax as 603 sets him down on the table. He turns away, fumbling in drawers for gauze wrapping and NX-4 ointment, taking longer to find the stuff than he really needs to. It's as he turns back, finding Caius with his head bent and his hands cupped in his lap, that he gets an idea of how to begin. 

He sets the stuff down, then waits a second, praying he won't scare the boy worse than he has already. 

"Look me in the eye, kid."

The hands in Caius's lap curl into pitifully non-threatening fists and his shoulders draw together as though they're trying to touch over his chest, but he does. His eyes are pale brown, or possibly green, and drawn tight at the edges, flicking fearfully over 603's face as though fighting the instinct to look away. 603 smiles at him. 

"This," he says, gesturing vaguely between them, "This is okay. You got that? It's fine. Look me in the eye whenever you want." 

Caius gives him an odd look, a vaguely disbelieving grimace that goes blank in another moment. 

"Then--earlier--"

And oh, he'll clear that off the floor right now. 

"You didn't do anything wrong, kid." 

Caius's eyes, already drifting back to stare at the floor again, snap up. His fisted hands unknot themselves, making a short, jerking gesture towards 603's own bandaged fingers. 

"But-the burn. You're hurt, and it's my fault." 

He raises an eyebrow at the kid. Hell, the boy is earnest. He'd barely even thought about the burns on his fingers; they'd heal fast enough, and he's been through so much worse that this hardly matters. 

"It's your fault I was stupid enough to dump boiling water on my fingers?" he asks, and shakes his head, knowing better than to leave the question open-ended. "No, kid, I'm fine, nobody got hurt, and hell, the potatoes didn't even burn. I'm sorry I scared you, and that all could've gone a lot better, but you're not in trouble." 

Caius seems to be mulling that over, if the half-strangled look on his face is anything to go by. 603 lets him. Enough talking for now; it's time to do something. "Let me see your wrist."

*   *   *

Caius's heart is pounding hard. He offers 603 his wrist, half-expecting the synth to lock it in a punishing grip and jerk him off the table, kick him to the floor where he belongs and order him to lick his boots in gratitude for the forgiveness. He wouldn't even hate the synth if he did.

But 603 just starts unwrapping the bandage, holding his arm with hard-skinned, light-touching fingers, and he's speaking before he can think better of it. 

"What is my position here?" he asks, and it's wrong. It's not what he wants to know, not really, and the words make him sound like a freeman accepting a paying job and not...what he is. Not wanting to crack the eggshell ice he's miraculously been supported by thus far and finally earn the synth's anger, he hurries to amend. "I mean, how am I expected to serve?"

That's...better, but it's not really what he means either. He means  _what am I to you that you would be gentle with me,_ and  _what can I do to convince you not to throw me aside,_ and _please, please, ask me for something quickly, before I'm too far in your debt to ever hope to repay it._

603, concentrating on pressing a stinging bit of cotton on his wrist, shrugs. 

"It's a big ship. Lots to do. I'll sure as hell be glad of a little help. Once you're healed, I'll show you the ropes." He glances up, meeting Caius's gaze, and Caius has already snapped his eyes back down to the floor before he remembers that that's allowed, now. As, apparently, is blatantly ignoring orders for no good reason, and getting his master hurt, and sobbing himself out on the synth's shoulder after throwing himself into a panic because of a boiling pot. All things that should earn him nothing but pain. Not a blanket. Not being talked to as though he's something more than a thing. Not the easygoing care with which 603 is wrapping his now-numb wrist. 

It doesn't make  _sense,_ but suddenly Caius is too spent to try and puzzle it out. And incidentally, there is something else that demands his attention, sinking in belatedly. The synth has promised to teach him something, things to make him more useful aboard the ship. Skilled slaves are worth more, treated better than unskilled or unfit ones; and even the lowest, most basically trained shiphand has a better chance of living long and well than a scarred pleasure slave. No one cared if they were disfigured. They did  _work_. Useful work, that had nothing to do with the sweaty press of skin to skin or interpreting sour-breathed, half-intelligible orders or trying to determine when to gasp and wriggle and when to lie still as a slice of meat on a platter. 

He blinks twice. 603 has finished with his other wrist, the odd numbness buzzing welcomely over the damaged skin, and is moving on to the burns on his chest. He's halfway through peeling the bandages away when Caius finds his breath again. 

"Thank you." 

The synth glances up at him, a slight frown of confusion between his brows. 

"Sure thing," he responds, oblivious to the full gamut of things he's being thanked for. Caius wishes he could pour it all out, but he manages to hold his tongue. It's no concern of the synth's what Caius's fate would've been if he hadn't picked him up, or just how much of a chance at life he's giving him now. No concern of his at all. So Caius bites his tongue and stays respectfully silent. 

It's a surprise when 603 (finished with his chest now, moving around to his back), speaks. 

"You like the stars, then?" 

It sounds casual enough. Nonthreatening. Still, Caius stiffens at it. 

"They are beautiful, Master." 

This earns him a few moments of silence as 603 carefully peels the bandages from his back. 

"And you don't like walls." 

He can't see the synth's face, since he's behind Caius now; but he's painfully aware that it would only take a little pressure, one dig from one of the now-gentle fingers daubing gel on back, to cause a blinding pain if his answer doesn't prove satisfactory. He can't begin to guess what kind of answer would be satisfactory, so he takes a chance on the truth. 

"No, Master. I don't." 

It's only a second later that he realizes that the ship is made of walls, and being trained as a shiphand will likely consist in being surrounded by walls. 

"Not always, though," he adds, desperate to keep whatever place the synth is offering him here. "Just sometimes. When it's a very small space, or when there's nothing else to think about, or when I'm alone." 

It's too many words, he knows it, and he winces at the accusative silence that follows. The walls stay in their proper places, for once, but that doesn't keep him from being afraid, and he shuts his eyes. 

The master just keeps spreading the gel over his back, stinging but not ungentle, and makes a small, thoughtful sound. 

"Well, then. I'll do my best not to leave you alone," he says, and Caius's breath shudders softly against his ribs. 

It sounds almost like a promise. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My writing's been going slow and steady, but I also have to get a short story edited by the end of the month, so the next chapter may take a little longer than usual. Not too long, though; this fic is more fun for me than editing short stories :D <3


	7. Safe for Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Food, clothes, and foiled expectations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. Are the best. Thank you for all your kind and encouraging words!!

He's about halfway through wrapping Caius's back when he remembers.  _Food._ Hell, he hadn't even fed the kid yet. No wonder he was so jumpy. 

"I'll be doing your feet next," He says, tying off the bandage. He feels faintly ridiculous. Discounting apologies, Caius had done more talking tonight than he had in the whole time 603 had known him, but the talkative spell seemed to have worn off, leaving them both wrapped in silence. 603 likes silence, but it feels odd to talk into it. Like he's intruding, breaking something. 

It wasn't often, he remembers, that he or the other army dogs were given medical treatment. Synths were cheaper to replace than to heal. There had been a few officers, though--operating with some strange brand of morality, maybe, or just a lack of economical sense--who had insisted on trying to save most of their wounded, human or no. He supposes he should be grateful; those officers had saved his life. Still, he remembers too much of it; the glaring lights, the latex-smooth hands holding him down, the ugly tang of antiseptic and blood in his nostrils and the half-panicked confusion as they talked over his head in a jargon he couldn't interpret. It would have been so much easier, so much less painful, if they'd just told him what was going on. 

So, here he was, mumbling useless bits of information at Caius, who held himself still and didn't say a single thing back. 

"This'll hurt, but just for a bit," he informs.

Caius already knew that, clearly, if his white-knuckled grip on the medbench is any clue. 603 winced as he wound the old bandages off the kid's right foot. He didn't know what had happened to it, and he didn't want to know, but it looked like Caius had walked across a floor made of razors. 

He wasn't exactly waiting for a hiss of pain as he started to spread NX-4 over the cuts, but he noticed, all the same, when none came. He looked up. Caius's jaw was set and tight, but he was watching his foot  with curiosity. He looked up when 603 stopped, and caught 603's gaze, holding it for a moment before glancing down again. 

Something like pride welled up in 603's chest, and he grinned, forgetting the ugly wounds on the boy's feet and whoever had caused them. Caius had survived it. He was safe, and unbroken, and he was gonna be just fine. 603 shook his head. 

"You're one hell of a trooper, kid."

He didn't miss the way Caius's head jerked up at that, but he was already looking down again, focusing on fixing the boy up so he could start to stand on his own. 

*   *   *

603 explained things as he worked--little bits of information, telling Caius what to expect and when. Caius paid attention as best he could, not sure if it was meant to be training or not. It was very vague training, if that was the case; he had a good guess as to the general theory of the gel and the wrapping by the end of it, but doubted he could manage to wrap his wounds himself. 

The numbness was too blissful to allow him to worry much, though. 

"I'll put these away." 

603 is gathering up the bandages, and uses his full hands to push a lumpy bundle of cloth closer to Caius on the bench. Caius blinks. It looks like--

"Clothes," the synth explains. "They're gonna be big on you, but it's what I've got. Put 'em on." 

He turns away, shuffling things absently as he seems to be looking for the proper places for everything in his hands. Caius has a stuttering moment of total blank. He still feels a little blank when he picks up the shirt and slips it on over his head. It's large, and soft, the sterile white material crumpling unattractively over him. The cloth against his skin feels strange, unfamiliar, but he's already feeling warmer. 

It's...nice. 

He struggles a little with the pants, but manages. The legs fall down far over his feet, and he curls his now-hidden toes against the material, a prickle of pleasure in his chest. 

603 has finally found the proper drawer, and he places the gel and bandaged carefully inside before turning around again. With the thrill of forbidden things, Caius looks up, trying to read the synth's face. He looks--tired. Strained. 

"When was the last time you ate?" 

Caius blinks. It had been before the cage, he remembers that much; but after the night he'd been marked past the brothel's ability to salvage and set out for sale, time had become a blur of fear and pain. He can't be sure how long it was. 

"I - can't remember, master. I'm sorry."

The synth nods, looking even more tired than before.  _Tired_ is better than  _angry_ , always, but Caius doesn't like the expression much. He likes it less on 603's face, and much less when he's somehow the cause of it. 

"Okay, kid. Let's get some food into you, then." 

*   *   *

He's set in a chair again, a bowl set in front of him, half-full of something warm and soupy. It's not until then that his stomach gives a demanding twist and his mouth starts to water, like hunger is a sleeping beast that's just been slapped awake. The suddenness of the feeling is enough to make him dizzy, and his fingers are shaking as he reaches for the spoon. 

"Not too fast, kid," 

his hand halts midway towards its goal, stomach twisting in violent protest of the delay as he looks up, scrambling for some hint as to what it is he's done wrong. 603 gives him a vaguely pained look. 

"Just go slow," he says. "Don't make yourself sick."

_don't hurt yourself. don't make yourself sick._ The synth's orders are taking on a pattern that's almost as reassuring as the bandages wrapped around his chest. He's supposed to save the synth the trouble of having to fix him up, which makes sense; but he's beginning to glean a notion that that might mean that 603 always intends to fix him up. 

It's a strange thought, probably the product more of the seeping numbness in his back and the softness of the clothing on his skin than any fact or logic, but he's tired and warm enough to entertain it all the same. 

It takes concentration to keep his too-long sleeves from dipping into the soupy mush, and it's that struggle to keep the clothing clean, and that struggle alone, that makes him follow his orders to eat slowly. 

The mush is heaven. He doesn't taste the first few bites--though there's not really that much  _to_ taste--but it's thick and grainy and warm, and every once in a while the spoon will pick up a shred of bright-orange, soggy fruit that bursts into wild flavors on his tongue. 603 never makes a move to tell him to stop or take the bowl back. Instead, he moves away completely, muttering something about having  _the cleanest kitchen in the goddamn galaxy, someone get me a medal._ He stays within sight, opening cupboards and drawers and moving the contents around with no apparent end in mind. Caius is able to eat more than half his portion when the synth stops, turning back to look at Caius.

He can feel the synth's eyes on him, and his hand stutters to a halt, spoon partway between the bowl and his mouth. 603 huffs something that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, and Caius's spine goes stiff as an iron bar, stomach twisting. Laughter is never the preface to anything good. 

"Hell, kid, that shirt really is huge on you. Here," 

603 strides up to the table. Caius stiffens further still, but knows better than to flinch away when the synth takes his arm. The grip is loose, though, not threatening  to twist or bruise, and all 603 does is roll the excess fabric up and away from Caius's wrists.

"There you go," he says, leaving Caius with the spoon still in his hand and the bowl of food still in front of him. In spite of his hunger, though, Caius's mind is only half on the food now. He watches 603 as he walks away. the synth's own sleeves are rolled up, and even at a distance Caius can see the the pale, ropy lines that snarl through the skin there. He does not know a great deal about scars, but he does not want to consider how deep a wound would have to be to make marks like those, or how much it must have hurt when it was made.

He aches to ask, and shoves another spoonful of the soup into his mouth before his tongue can get the better of him.

All too soon, the food is gone, the weight of it settling hard and heavy in Caius's stomach. His hands have stopped trembling, but there's still a nervous flutter in his ribs when he looks up, hoping to make clear without speaking the fact that he's done. He's not sure he can trust his voice, just now, what with the tiredness and the numbness and the fullness of his stomach.

And now, a current of fear running underneath it all. 

His training for his real position here has to wait until he's healed, 603 said; but, whatever definition of 'healed' the synth had been using, it won't happen for a while. Too long a while for Caius to expect to be allowed to be useless in the meantime. 

He shouldn't be afraid, he thinks; it'll be nothing new, and much less than he owes the synth for all he's been given. He should be glad for the opportunity to give a little in return. He tries to imagine, again, the way 603 has always touched him; gentle hands, solid and steady, strong arms wrapped around his shoulders as he cried. Between that gentleness and the numbing gel slathered over most of his body, it should barely even hurt. 

None of those thoughts can silence the desperate, traitorous part of him that's trying to hope it doesn't happen at all. It's a stupid hope. Whatever the synth's plans for him in the future, no one goes to a brothel to find a shiphand. 

603 turns away from aimlessly moving boxes around in one of the cupboards, and Caius's heart starts beating heard enough to hurt. He really wishes it wouldn't. He's too tired to be nervous right now; but, nervous he is. 

"Done?" 

"Yes, master." 

603 takes the bowl, then, letting it clatter carelessly in the sink. 

"You can call me by my name, if you like," he says when he turns around again. Caius doesn't know if it's meant as a reward, or a personal preference, or something to make the night go by easier for both of them; but he knows immediately that he's not going to call the synth anything but  _master_ unless he's ordered otherwise. He's let the lines blur before, and he knows how dangerous it is. He nods all the same. 

"I'm gonna pick you up." 

He's lifted smoothly out of his chair, and for the first time since 603 laid a hand on his shoulder back in the brothel, his master's touch completely fails to be comforting. He tries to take some reassurance from the synth's solidness, from the careful way he never touches anywhere that might hurt. He tries to relax, to melt his body invitingly against the synth's chest. He tries to begin the half-drifting lack of presence, the mental fog that always made this go so much easier. 

He can't do any of it. He stays stiff and and silent and painfully aware of both as 603 carries him back down the night-dark hall and into the starlit control room. He winces when he sees the stars. they are bright and pure and should never, ever have to see this. He doesn't want to see them, either, not now, not while--

603 lays him down on the mattress, and his stomach drops. It's the clothes, he thinks past the pounding of his heartbeat; he might have been all right,  _this_ might have been all right, but the soft fabric has given him an impression of safety for the past half-hour and now he cannot bear the thought of the pleasant illusion being taken away. 

It's wrong to feel like that. This is fine. It will be fine. 

603 reaches over him, and he shuts his eyes, pressing himself further down into the mattress as the synth ... lays a blanket on him and tucks it fumblingly around his shoulders. 

He opens his eyes again. 603 is a lump of shadow in the dim light, kneeling beside the mattress but making no move to join him on it. Caius's heart is still hurting his ribs, but the weight of the blanket that's between him and the synth is serving to calm him better than any of his own mental threats or pleas had managed. He's safe. Not for  _forever,_ but for tonight. For some unfathomable reason, he's safe tonight. 

603 lays a hand on his shoulder again, and the touch is no longer a threat. Just nice. 

"I gotta get some sleep, kid. You gonna be okay alone in here?" 

_Okay_ does not begin to cover it, and Caius has to choke down a laugh. 

"Yes, Master, I'll be fine." 

More than fine. He'd be great. This is the best he's ever been. 

"Alright." the synth's voice is rough with the need for sleep. "Get some rest, kid. I'll see you in the morning." 

He brushes a thumb, dry and work-rough, over Caius's forehead, and stands up. He's almost out of the room before Caius finds his voice again. 

"Master?"

"Yeah, kid?" 

Words aren't enough. They aren't. But the only other thing Caius can think of doing is crying, and they've both had more than enough of that already. 

"thank you."

"Sure thing, kid. G'night." 

And like that, the synth is gone. 

*   *   *

603 should be better at staying awake than this. He's been trained better than this, much as he wishes he hadn't been. He's been awake for three days straight before, slogging through mud on half-rations; one late night should feel like nothing. 

He's sitting on his bunk, and the desire to lie down and let himself shut off is almost overpowering. He stays upright by willpower alone, staring down into his hands, at the string of beads tangled in them. 

Arnulf told him to pray more, so here he is, praying more. 

Trying to pray. 

Trying and failing to pray. 

All he wants to do is fall asleep. The rosary is mocking him, and he ignores it, trying to remember the words, the pattern. He knows them--knew them, anyway, but now the knowledge is idly flitting through his mind, flicking its tail as it dashes around a corner and escapes his grasp yet again. He growls, letting the rosary clatter onto the comm station. Tomorrow. He'll remember tomorrow. Tonight, something a little simpler. He closes his eyes, well aware of how dangerous it is. 

"Heavenly father," he says uncertainly, pushing down the odd feeling the words always give him. "...help Caius, alright? Help him...help him heal. Help him not be so scared all the time." 

Silence. 

""And...help me take care of him. Help me keep him safe."

He's out of ideas, and all he wants is to lie down. He mumbles an Amen and falls flat on the bed, too exhausted to bother with blankets. 


	8. Able Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oatmeal and an engine room. 
> 
> Or, 603 and Caius get the Albatross ready to fly, and Caius really likes rusty metal things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. Are awesome. (And very, very patient. Sorry I’ve been taking so long to update!) All the love for this fic has been so encouraging <3

He comes to wakefulness by being repeatedly nudged in the shoulder by something warm.

  
“Hey, Caius. Food.”

  
He blinks, trying to free his eyes of a thick layer of sleep gel, and fumbles with his blankets in an attempt to sit up. He squints at the thing the synth was nudging him with—a bowl, full of something soupy and steaming. His mind feels muzzy with sleep and unusually quiet, but he has enough wits to realize he’s slept far past when he should. The ship’s lighting is bright with a midday kind of glare.

  
603 doesn’t look angry, though, and would hardly be giving Caius food now if he was planning on accusing him of laziness later. He takes the bowl gingerly, ready for it to be snatched away again, but it isn’t. It smells of spice and sugar.

  
“Oatmeal,” 603 explains. “Rations shipment came in this morning.”

  
He has a bowl of his own, and slides down until he’s sitting on the hard floor a few feet away from Caius’s mattress. Hungry as he is—and he is hungry, even though he’d just eaten the night before—he can’t help but stop and stare. There’s a chair right behind the synth. Why would he want to sit on the floor?

  
After a moment of consideration, he pushes the thought from his head. 603 lives in a world entirely his own, with rules that make no sense at all, and he’d already resolved to stop trying to understand it.

  
It’s a resolution he can already tell he’s going to struggle with.

  
603 takes a bite of breakfast, looking out the screen into space, and Caius shifts in his mound of blankets, curling tighter around the warm bowl. He doesn’t want the synth to go away; there is something about him that makes the room seem safe, and Caius liked feeling safe, strange as it was. But at the same time, Caius wasn’t used to being watched so closely. He’s not used to masters seeing him like this: muzzy with sleep, huddled in blankets and needy for warmth and food and company. Slaves were not supposed to need things; they were supposed to be quiet and orderly and easily ignored.

  
Then again, the synth had already seen him cry. The thought floods more shame into his veins, but it gives him enough of a grasp on himself to dip his spoon into the warm mush and draw it, cautious, to his mouth. He halts as soon as he tastes it, staring down at the bowl in confusion. Mush should not taste that good. It shouldn’t taste like cider and cinnamon and fruit. But it does. He hides his enjoyment as best he can and takes another bite, and that’s when 603 turns from looking out the wide viewscreen to give him a crooked grin. The synth’s teeth are odd—a little too sharp, canines a little too big—but there’s no danger in the expression.

  
“Good stuff, isn’t it? We’ll be set for rations for another few months, and we should be able to leave port today. Had better, if we don’t want to face some heavy delay fines.”

  
Leave port. Caius has never left. StarPort 13 is where he was born—where he’d assumed he’d stay until he died. The thought of leaving is—not frightening, not really, just—new. The question is out before he can think better of it.

  
“Where are we going, master?”

  
603 shrugged as Caius stiffened, but the synth seemed unbothered by the out-of-turn question. Caius stuffed another spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth to keep it from furnishing any further surprises.

  
“I’ve got some cargo to drop off on Blue 93-X, around the edge of the Brannax system. We can stay there awhile, see if another job finds us, or if we can find one.”

  
Caius is wondering, now, what kind of job would find them on Blue 93-X, almost as intently as he’s wondering what kind of cargo the Albatross is carrying there, but he manages to keep his mouth shut this time. He nods, instead, and swallows another bite of oatmeal. Silence falls over them both, and it sets him on edge. He curls into himself, trying to be as silent and unobtrusive as possible. Not for the first time, he thinks it would be nice to be invisible. The knobs of his knees and elbows are protruding rudely into the space around him, the blankets are sickly heavy, and the oatmeal is warm and delicious and almost impossible to eat politely. By the time they’re both finished, the heavy certainty of being an annoyance had settled firmly in Caius’s belly.

  
Ever patient, 603 only looks up at him with a small smile, and takes his empty bowl to stack neatly on top of his own. Then the synth holds them both for a moment without moving, and Caius realizes his mistake. Masters don’t carry dishes.

  
“I can,” he offers, holding out his hands, and it’s only once he’s holding the dirty dishes that he realizes he’s not sure where they’re supposed to go, and he wouldn’t be able to walk them there even if he did.

  
603 blinks at him, brow still furrowed slightly in confusion, and Caius can feel his heart start beating faster.

  
“Okay,” the synth says, finally, “Good. You can carry those, and I can carry you. We’ll stop by the kitchen on the way down.”

“Down, master?”

  
“To the engine room. I’ve got to reattach the water and fuel lines and check the battery before we start her up, and I thought I’d show you around while we’re at it.”

  
He swung around, grinning over his shoulder at Caius. “Climb on, kid. Time to see how to fly a spaceship.”

 

They deposited the dishes in the kitchen. Caius held tight to 603’s shoulders, the faint worry that he was doing something terribly wrong simmering. It had been two days since the synth had bought him—two days without punishment, and almost without pain. He had never gone so long without angering someone before. It was only a matter of time; but the longer he went in this strange limbo full of food and gentleness, the less he thought he could manage it when it inevitably ended. Something would make 603 angry, eventually; something always did, and Caius felt, increasingly, that he had to measure every breath to ward that inevitability off for as long as he could.

*   *   *

The stairs into the lower parts of the ship were plagued with rust that flaked off and skittered to the floor at every one of 603’s steps. Rust had spread liberally on the walls, too, and a thick, oily tang hung in the air, reminiscent of the docks of the StarPort and the odd scent of 603’s coat.

  
A light flicked on, detecting movement as 603 clattered down the last few steps, and bathed the room in a golden glow utterly unlike the cold white and blue lighting of the upper decks.

  
Caius had never seen so many pipes. Pipes, and hoses, and big lumpy box-things with wires sticking out of them and clear plexiglass tanks filled with different shades of dirty-looking liquids. There is dust and rust and grease everywhere, and Caius thinks he saw a flicker of movement from a disappearing warp-rat as the lights flicked on.

  
There’s a light bump against his chest as 603 shifts his shoulder, and Caius collects his focus to find 603 looking back at him cautiously.   
“It’s a little tight in here, kid. You gonna be okay?”

  
Checking to see if he can be resilient, Caius thinks; if he can be useful. He’s surprised at himself when he doesn’t even have to lie. He’s barely noticed the walls, intent as he was on...everything else.

  
“I’m all right, Master.”

  
He’s not paying full attention to the synth’s response to that, though, focused as he is on the machinery. He’s going to learn what it all is. How it all works. The thought of it is putting an unfamiliar itch in his fingers, and his heart has picked up its beat, which is odd. He’s not afraid. This is the least afraid he’s been in a long time.

  
“So,” 603 says, “First thing we’ve got to do is detach these fuel lines—the orange ones—from the stasis ports and redirect them back to the ignition chamber, here.”

  
the fuel lines are thick and made of a woven material that is, surprisingly in the midst if all the grime, shiny. There’s a latch that locks them in place, and 603 flicks it free with his thumb, letting it spring open, then pulling at the heavy line, working it free. Caius blinks at the latch. The little metal pieces fit together so perfectly.

  
“Can I try?”

  
603 glances back at him, and he freezes for a moment, realizing the question might not have been welcome, but 603 was already giving him a grin and nodding,

  
“Sure, kid. Second line’s just—there. Can you reach it?”

  
He could. It was a little awkward, hitching himself up on 603’s back to stretch over his shoulder, but not impossible; and he felt the second clasp, solid and delicate, in his fingers. He copied 603’s gesture with it, and it popped open cleanly in his hands.

* * *

From the look on Caius’s face, you’d think the kid had just been given his own personal star. Come to think of it, this was the first time 603 had seen him smile.

  
He had never imagined that fuel lines would be a source of joy for anyone, but hell. The kid was actually happy. 603 felt a flash of victory, bright as a new sun, and Caius looked down at him, holding the line clasp like it was made of gold, wild excitement sparkling in his eyes.

  
“What next?”

  
He’s dropped the master, 603 notices. The engine room, it seems, is a success. He has a feeling that it’s going to take forever to get the Albatross up and running.

  
“They get reattached over here,” he explains, twisting the second line off the stasis port. He hands Caius the second clasp, hefting the lines and walking them over to the ignition ports. He can feel the boy’s eyes tracking him, following his every move. Caius has a quick eye, and nimble fingers; with a little training, he could make a more than decent mechanic someday. Engineer, even.

  
“Wanna try fastening them up again?” He asks, leaning down so that the kid can reach. That same flash of excitement shows up again as he works the clasps on and, hardly hesitating, gets them attached.

  
603 doesn’t get it—what it is, exactly, that makes this of all things the thing to get Caius to have a little life in him—but he doesn’t have to get it. He can just be glad of it.

  
He starts explaining the filtration system as they go to hook up the water lines, and Caius starts asking questions. Hesitant at first, and halting, but there are a lot of them. Fitting the Albatross for open space usually takes him about an hour and a half, but with a kid on his back asking him to explain everything in sight, the whole process takes up the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.   
603 does not have the slightest capacity to mind.

* * *

The time in the engine room seems to zip by as fast as time spent sleeping, but by the time 603 has explained how the generator works to him and pulled the lever to restart the latent engines, he’s vaguely aware of the fact that they’ve been down here for hours. A light buzz fills the air, mellowing out slowly into a heavy rumble that shakes the floor under them both, and 603 gives the greasy wall an affectionate pat.

  
“Up and running,” he states with some pride. “there’s my girl.”

  
Caius grins. His hands feel rough and dry, like 603’s, and though they’ve gathered a fair number of bumps and bruises from the sharp edges of the machinery, none of them hurt. Not in any way that matters.

  
“How’s your head?”

  
603 sounds oddly cautious about asking, and at first Caius is at a loss as to why his head is being talked about at all, but then he remembers—603 had tried to duck under a lowish pipe and Caius hadn’t been paying enough attention to duck with him. The resounding clang as his forehead hit metal had scared him more than anything, and neither the noise nor the dizzy, throbbing pain that accompanied it had surprised him as much as the pale-faced, nervous way the synth had set him down, checking him over and apologizing as though he’d just kicked someone’s favorite house-pet.

  
“I’m fine,” he ventures, for what had to be the fifth time.

  
“I’m sorry,” 603 says, for what must be the twentieth.

  
“It’s—it’s all right,” Caius offers. It’s a terrible thing to say, because it implies that Caius has any right to say that it was not all right if he so pleased, but he really wants the horrible, guilt-ridden look off of his master’s face.

  
And besides, it is all right. His head is still a little sore, now that he thinks of it, and there’ll probably be a bruise later, but he’s had worse.   
603 nods, and starts climbing the long, rusted stairway again. The soft lights flick off, leaving them only a sterile white glow coming from the upper reaches of the ship.

  
“I’m starving, kid. You up for some more food?”

  
He just ate this morning, and one meal a day should have been more than enough for him, but—he is.

  
“I could eat, master,” he says, still cautious in case in he’s misread the synth’s offer, but 603 only nods.

  
“Well, then. Let’s eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel like we’re getting a little closer to the bones of the story, but I’m still figuring out what’s supposed to *happen* in it, so updates might be a little slow for a while until I get back into a groove again <3 love y’all and thank you so much for reading!!!


	9. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Concerning scars, survival, and the art of knife sharpening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, awesome people! You guys are the literal best, you know that? I look at the responses to this fic every time I get the urge to feel as warm and gooey as a chocolate cookie, so. Thank you <3 
> 
> Just a warning for this chapter, there’s a bit of a not-quite-flashback towards the end of some of the stuff Caius went through. It’s not detailed, but it’s not nice either. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading, and hope y’all enjoy <3

And ‘master’ was back again. Not that it should have come as a surprise, really.

  
603 was trying to follow Arnulf’s lead, to remember his own struggles and see Caius’s in light of them. He doesn’t like remembering. It’s like going down one of the dark tunnels into a fighting arena, knowing there would be blood and pain at the end of it.

  
None of the officers had liked him acting too human. He’d never called them master—they never demanded it of him—but they expected him to be dull-eyed and obedient, to come to heel at a snap of their fingers. They’d wanted him to act like he was all dog instead of half-man; and he’d acquiesced to protect his own hide. The habits had taken forever to shake. However much he insisted that he was not an animal, however much Arnulf treated him as nothing less than a brother, the same old itch in his head would still resurface from time to time, telling him that he was pretending, he was holding his head too high, and someone was sure to come along and shove him painfully back into place if he kept it up.

  
Still. It got better, with time. Would get better. Caius had smiled, and he wasn’t afraid to look 603 in the eye anymore, and the ‘master’ had been dropped almost the whole time they were in the engine room. Just until he’d mentioned food. Food was precious. He knew like an ache in his bones how little you wanted to risk angering whoever was in charge of your food; but he was the one in charge of the food now, and there was nothing—not disrespect, or violence, or insults—that Caius could do that would keep 603 from seeing him fed.   
He felt the boy’s arms tighten around his shoulders as he strode through the doors into the kitchen, and realized that his face had rearranged itself into a scowl. He did his best to wipe it off before he set Caius down at the table. He was careful, maybe a little unecessarily so, but he’d already whacked the kid’s head into a pipe once today, and Caius had enough bruises.

  
“Hm,” he said, once he’d set the kid down. Caius looked up at him, slightly worried.

  
“You’ve got—“ 603 started, and stopped again, because between the cobwebs in Caius’s hair, the rust gunk and mechanical grease smeared liberally all over the rest of him, and the fact that Caius seemed innocently oblivious to all of it, he wasn’t sure what he’d set out to mention anymore.

  
Caius looked down at himself, and the hitch of sudden tension in the line of his back froze 603’s budding amusement where it stood.

  
“I—I’m sorry, I got your clothes all—“

  
“It’s okay, kid.”

  
Caius looked up at him, an oddly disbelieving glare on his face for a second before it disappeared again.

  
“I should have been paying better attention,” he insisted. His voice was sharp, so different from his usual quiet, trembling one that 603 raised his eyebrows in surprise. Caius caught the expression and, like a brakeworm exposed to the light, shrunk into himself, folding into as small a space as he could without actually changing position and bowing his head. He didn’t apologize, though. Just...waited.

  
“Engine gunk gets everywhere, kid. A little dirt just means you’ve been working.”

  
He didn’t get a reply to that, and it didn’t look like he was going to. Caius had raised his head up too high, and expected to have it bitten off. He hesitated, wondering if he could say something reassuring, but nothing more came to mind.

  
He let out a soft sigh, and turned away. They’d both think a little better with some food in their stomachs.

 

* * *

 

Caius didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to speak, either; he still remembered the sound of his own voice, knife-sharp and contradicting. Out in the open, where he couldn’t call it back, or do it over, or soften it.

  
He felt as though he was coming undone. The careful control that he was usually able to manage was slipping out of his grasp, making him forget himself. He hadn’t even thought of the grime in the engine room, hadn’t given the slightest consideration to keeping his new-given clothing clean. It was pure luck that 603 hadn’t considered the slip worth punishing him over; he very well could have, and Caius would have just tripped into making the synth angry when it would have only taken a little thought to avoid it altogether. He had to be better, more careful, than that.

  
603 was turned away, not looking at him, and Caius shivered. The synth had carried him around all morning to save the soles of his feet and was now cooking him food. Caius had rarely felt so completely useless.

  
“I can help, master,” he said, cautious. Opening his mouth carried with it the danger of saying something he’d regret, but the silence was worse.

  
603 turned back, glancing between Caius and his own work.

  
“Not much to do but open packages and stick ‘em in water,” he said. He faltered a little as he looked up at Caius’s face. Frowned.

  
“Hm. Tell you what, kid,” he said, opening a kitchen drawer and pulling out a block of plastic with a groove slicing through the top of it, and then a couple of knives. Caius tensed when he saw them, the instinct of bitter experience hissing that he’d done something wrong, pushed the synth’s patience too far. He’d been weak and useless and what would a few more scars be on his already damaged skin, anyway?

  
603 set the block and knives down on the table, handles facing Caius, and the sick twisting in his gut began to settle.

  
“Here.” 603 dropped down to one knee by Caius’s chair so that Caius was looking down at him instead of the other way around. It was not calming. “You can sharpen these. Like this,” and he slid the knife into the groove at the top of the block, drawing it slowly through with a subdued shhiiinnk. He brushed his thumb over the sharp edge, made an indifferent kind of humming sound, and handed the knife over to Caius. It was small, and surprisingly light.

  
“Got it?”

  
Caius couldn’t manage more than a nod. The knife didn’t feel as odd, or as dangerous, in his fingers as he’d expected. It didn’t feel like a threat, like something that could draw blood; it just felt like...an object.

  
603 nodded, and went back to opening packages and putting them in water.

  
It was quiet for a while, then, save for the steady shhink, shhink as Caius slid the knife through the block. He didn’t know how sharp it was supposed to become. There were three of them, and he wasn’t sure how long to take with each one to have them done by the time 603 was finished making food, so he started sharpening them in a kind of steady, numbing cycle. Three strokes with one knife, put it down, three strokes on the next, put that down, three strokes on the next.

  
It was easy work to get absorbed in. He startled a little when 603 was suddenly beside him, setting a bowl of steaming...something in front of him. The synth picked up one of the knives with a small appreciative noise.

  
“Well done,” he said, running a thumb along the blade, and Caius pulled his arms in close, trying to contain the uncomfortable warmth that bloomed in his chest at the words.

  
603 set the knife down again, sitting in the chair across from Caius’s and pulling his own bowl of food close. He bent his head over it for a moment—not inhaling the scent, but as though he’d suddenly decided to fall asleep.

  
He looked up again just as Caius began to worry for him, noticed Caius staring, and hunched his shoulders slightly as though he’d been caught at something. Which was ridiculous.

  
“Eat up, kid,” he ordered, and Caius was more than happy to comply.

  
The silence was discomfiting and pervasive, but the food was warm. It was a uniform mush with chunks in it, but by some strange miracle, it was good. Every once in a while Caius thought he tasted meat—something the brothel had only fed them once or twice a year, after the festival days for Sykalis or Chevanne when StarPort 13 had been filled with free-spending customers.

  
603 had rolled his sleeves up again, and Caius found himself staring at the pale lines that criss-crossed over them. The scars didn’t twist the skin-most merely discolored it, and some were raised up, thick and curving like embossed leather.

  
“How did you get those?” He asked without thinking, and froze as soon as the words left his mouth. Questions like that usually had the sense to remain unspoken, harmlessly drifting through his head. The synth’s eyebrows raised in surprise that was sure to turn to anger in half a minute, and Caius stumbled to make amends,

  
“I—That was out of turn, master, I’m sorry.”

  
He was gripping his spoon like it was one of the knives he’d sharpened, heart racing at the idea of offending the synth. It was something more than fear of punishment that made the idea terrible.

  
With some effort, he forced his fingers to set the spoon down, and placed his hands on the table—loose-fingered and wrists crossed.   
603, though, didn’t seem to be paying much attention, either to his apology or his posture. He was looking down at his own arms, an expression on his face that was all but impossible to read as anger.

  
“‘S not out of turn, kid,” he assured distractedly. “It’s just—“ he stopped, looked up. Caius had never seen him look so uncertain.   
Finally, he laid one arm flat on the table, pulling the sleeve of it further back to expose the whole stumble of ragged, pale lines. He drew a finger along the lightest of them.

  
“This,” he said, “Was from a time when our transport vehicle ran over a road mine. Sliced my arm climbing free of the wreck. This one,” a tiny raised-up line that cut right between two of his fingers, “Was from the first time I tried to cut up an onion. And this,” A sharply-defined line, long and angry-looking, “Was from blocking a Barbear’s tusk. A couple of officers thought it’d be fun to watch a synth fight one of the beasts, so they stuck me in a cage with one so pain-mad it’d have tried to tear its own mother apart.”

  
His voice was rough as he talked, but not with anger. Not with any emotion Caius could define. He couldn’t stop staring at the lines. There were too many count; some smooth, some ragged, each with their own story to tell. He couldn’t stop his next words from sliding off his tongue, either.

  
“You were a slave,” he whispered, because no free man would talk about being stuffed in a cage to die so calmly.   
A shard of terror went through his stomach as soon as he realized what he’d said, but 603 huffed a laugh that died off without turning nasty.

  
“I’m a synth, kid. Comes with the territory.”

  
Replies bubbled up in Caius’s throat, none of them quite right. He wanted to say he was glad 603 was free now, but without implying any similar desire on his part. He wanted to say that 603 should never have been caged, or hurt, or scarred like that; but the words wouldn’t quite fit themselves together.

  
603 was already pulling his sleeves back down.

  
“Why’d you want to know, anyway?” He asks.

  
There is an odd kind of safety in the space around them, Caius thinks. Perhaps it’s the smell of the food, or the fact that 603 hasn’t yet raised a hand to hurt him for any of his mistakes; but whatever it is, even though the fear is still there as it always is, making his heart jump and his hands clammy, it’s not wheedling its way into his very bones. There is no danger between them, and the knowledge is enough to keep Caius from tripping over his own words, for once.

“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. “I was just curious.”

  
“Ah.”

  
603 is silent for another long minute, picking idly at a patch of dry skin on his palm. Finally, he says,

  
“At the brothel, they told me you were—they said you were disfigured. Was that because they knew you’d scar?”

  
The words should make Caius nervous; but not here. Not now.

  
“Yes.”

  
603 nods. Picks at his hands.

  
“You’re not, you know that?” He says at last, looking up with something fiery in his eyes. For a moment, the light seems to flash against them in a way more animal than human, but still, Caius can’t quite find it in himself to be afraid, even when the sharp growl under the synth’s words turns clearly angry.

  
“Whoever did that to you, all the—they’re the ones who’re twisted up and wrong. Not you. All those scars are gonna be is proof you’ve survived something no one should’ve had to deal with in the first place. Proof you’re strong.”

  
He’s not afraid, still, but the words settle inside him in a way that doesn’t make him feel strong at all. The cuts on his back don’t feel like proof he’s survived anything. They just hurt.

  
He looked at 603’s hands again, thought about the thick patterning of scars on his arms and all the pain they must have caused, and thought that maybe the synth knew more about surviving things than he did.

  
The lack of fear is uncomfortable. He feels weak and wide open; and part of him wants nothing more than to close himself up again.

  
“It was,” he starts, as the half of him that’s trying to hide itself screams at him to stop, “It was—he—he said he wanted to mark me. Make me his.”

  
Saying it out loud makes a shiver run down his spine. That man, and that night, is both a faceless blur and a set of very distinct memories. Caius remembers the silver clips that clinked against the floor as the man took off his coat, and thinking that he’d be one of the easier customers. He remembers the sick feeling of horror as he felt blood trickle from the first open cut and realized that the man wasn’t planning to stop anytime soon. He remembers screaming for Brion, the guard assigned to his hall. He remembers the man laughing when Brion never came. He remembers not being able to think anything but that he was being damaged, and they were going to throw him away, and it hurt.

  
603 let out a low and purely animal growl, and Caius uncrossed his wrists, taking his cold hands off the table in order to wrap his arms around himself again, trying to stop the feeling of wide-open helplessness that had passed beyond uncomfortable and was now bordering on painful.

  
“You’re not his, kid. You’re never gonna be his.”

  
Caius blinked away the sting at the edges of his eyes and nodded.

  
After a while, they both started eating again. For once, the silence wasn’t predatory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m doing my level best to drown the world in angst, just so y’all know. It’s a noble cause.


	10. Uncertain Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares, tea, and miscommunication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! You guys are all amazing, I just want to say thank you for being so supportive through a...really, really long hiatus. (Sorry about that).   
> Life has been a little crazy since the last chapter; in the course of a few months, I got a full-time job, a car, an apartment, and started a relationship with a really cool guy. It’s all been awesome, but my writing has kinda fallen by the wayside. It is back now! Hooray! Hopefully updates from here on out will be a little more consistent, but I’m a horrible procrastinator, so apologies in advance for any delays. 
> 
> Warning-wise, this is a kinda dramatic/uncomfortable chapter, and there’s an expectation of rape (proved false, obviously, but still). Thanks for reading!

The Albatross is on autopilot, free of port and flying along through open space at a respectable clip. The lights have cycled through their afternoon, evening, and sunset settings; and now the whole ship is as black as the very fabric of the universe.

603 is staring at the ceiling, wondering, not for the first time, why the Synthomorph Corps engineers hadn’t just set him up with a convenient little shutoff switch. Maybe with a timer. _Sleep_ _for_ _seven_ _hours_ , click. It would be awfully convenient.

They’d modified his heart to beat upwards of 500 times a minute and given him a sense of smell that could pick out and identify every type of metal that had gone into the Albatross’s walls. A simple shutoff switch couldn’t have been that hard.

Titanium. Aluminum. Rust. Rubber. He could smell the remnants of dinner on his own breath, the lingering engine grease that he’d long since scrubbed off his fingers, and the light, dry scent of soap that he knew belonged to a freshly bathed Caius a few rooms down the hall.

603 groaned, pressing his face into the mattress, and shut his eyes tight, trying to ignore the running list in his head of every scent the mattress carried. His heartbeat was starting to make his ribs ache.

Finally, he shoved himself to his feet, waving a hand in the air vaguely to activate the lights and growling at the brain-searing brightness when they finally switched on.

He would eat something. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but eating was pleasant and it was the only activity that wouldn’t set his battle-ready body even more on edge, save for a shower, and the Albatross had a greater supply of food than it did warm water. ‘

Caius had liked the warm water. It had almost sent him to sleep, and he’d kept dozing off while 603 changed his bandages, falling sound asleep as soon as the blanket was tucked around his shoulders.

The door to the hallway zithered open, the night-dim lights outside his quarters making the ship seem larger and emptier than usual, and providing a welcome rest for his eyes. He padded down the hallway,blinking blearily, the metal flooring cold against his paws.

The walls hummed softly with the reverberations from the engines, and underneath that sound was the gentle clicking of his claws on the floor and the hollow huff of the conditioning system as it began to cycle the excess carbon dioxide from the air.

There was another sound, too. Just a sliver of it, hiding under everything else; thoughts of tea slipped out of 603’s mind as he stopped, cocking his head to one side to better listen for it.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sounds of the ship.

But no, there it was again. Soft and small and...distressed. 603 frowned, swinging away from the kitchen and walking unsteadily back past his berth and into the darkened cockpit.

Caius was shivering, making small, involuntary movements and sounds, eyes screwed shut and brows drawn low.

“Hey,” 603 mumbled, reaching for the boy’s shoulder and rubbing it lightly. “S’ok. It’s a nightmare. You’re dreaming.”

Caius drew sharply away from his touch and made a kind of strangled, whimpering noise that made 603 sit back on his heels, hands hovering uselessly as something twisted inside his chest. He hesitated for a moment. The starlight shows him a little but a sort of bluish outline that is Caius under the blanket—small, and shaking, and suddenly 603 can’t stand it any longer. He reaches out, gripping Caius’s shoulder tight and shaking him lightly.

“Wake up,” he orders, voice rougher than he’d meant to make it.

He knew Caius was awake the moment the boy went still—horribly, corpsishly still—while simultaneously seeming to be trying to sink into the mattress. 603 took his hand away, and it felt like a mistake, but possibly not so much of a mistake as leaving it there would have been.

It all felt like a mistake, actually, since the second he’d heard the boy whimpering and made an about-face in the hall, a sick and sour-stomached mistake that he he couldn’t see any alternative to. What had he been supposed to do, leave the boy to his nightmare?

Caius doesn’t move or speak. He just lays there, waiting.

“You were having a nightmare,” 603 whispers. Even quiet as he makes it, his voice still sounds like something dragging over shardrocks.

Of course Caius probably knows he’d been having a nightmare, he’d been the one having it. Damn the sleep-hungry beast in his head that’s hoarding all his words, refusing to let him find any of the good ones.

“I’m sorry for waking you, but it seemed—“ 603 waited a moment, until his brain grudgingly provided him with, “Bad.”

“Oh,” Caius says softly. “Thank you, Master. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

603 blinked.

“You didn’t,” he says, and wants to add more, but more won’t come. He halfheartedly considers offering to carry the boy into the kitchen for a midnight snack, but Caius is nervous around him yet, and just because 603 can’t creep doesn’t mean that the kid shouldn’t get a fair chance at it.

Putting out a hand to rest it on the boy’s shoulder, he hesitates, remembering the way Caius had sunk down into the mattress, as if 603’s hand was a burning brand on his skin that he dared not protest.

“I’ll just,” he started, then stops. Thinks. “Would you like another blanket?”

It seems like a wonderful idea, but the suggestion is followed by a heavy silence.

“I’m all right, Master.”

This is a complication. 603 wants to get Caius another blanket. He wants, with a fervor even he could recognize as ridiculous, to get Caius every blanket the ship contains and wrap him in them until maybe, finally, the boy could feel safe again.

But Caius doesn’t want a blanket. Unless of course he does, but doesn’t want to be a bother.

“Okay,” 603 finally says, feeling exhausted to his very bones. “I’m just—I’m going to go back to bed, all right kid?”

But not before going to the kitchen for something to make his throat feel less like it was about to constrict and strangle him of its own accord. Some of the tea Arnulf had sent him, probably. He still doesn’t really understand the point of tea; but it is warm, and the smell always seems to calm him when his heart starts racing like this.

“Would you—would you like me to accompany you, Master?”

He opens his mouth to say no, sinceCaius needed his sleep and 603 could probably manage sitting in a kitchen and nursing a cup of tea by himself, but the words die in his throat. He doesn’t want to be alone, and he doesn’t want Caius to be alone.

“Yes,” he says. “Well, I mean—if you’d like. I’d like the company.”

Damn it, his tongue feels slow and sluggish tonight.

Caius twisted around to sit up, looking much calmer than 603 had ever seen him before.

“I would like to, yes,” he murmured, and 603 felt relief sink into his chest as he turned around, offering his back.

“Climb on, then.”

 

  * * *



 

The synth’s shoulders are solid, his pace sleepy and lumbering, and Caius is not afraid. He’s a little—no, more than a little—proud of that. Ever since the cage outside the brothel, the shivering cold and the cuts on his skin and the fear that no one would come, no one would want him and he’d be thrown out with the day’s refuse, he had felt loose and uncertain, as though he’d been set on ground that kept moving underneath his feet.

603 is kind—unbelievably kind—but Caius had been utterly failing to make sense of him thus far, and that had not helped make the world feel any steadier.

Now, though, this makes sense. He is steady,and in control, and not in pain. He knows what the synth wants and he knows that he can handle it.

The synth will not be cruel or careless. It’s more assurance than Caius has ever had before. He was fairly certain that he could please the synth, and if he was pleased, then Caius would have something more solid to bind him to this ship, and this master, and the clear, clean work in the engine room that promised something like a future if he could learn it well enough.

603 is not carrying him back to his cabin. Instead, he’s taking them into the kitchen, tripping the sensor for the over-bright day cycle lights. Caius squnts against the sudden glare, and 603 grumbles a low curse.

He sets Caius in a chair, pats him gently on the shoulder.

“Tea?” The synth says.

And just like that, Caius’s world has stopped making sense again.

 

  * * *



 

They talk about nightmares. Or, rather, 603 talks about nightmares.

“They’ll go away, eventually.” He says. “Not all of them, but you’ll have good dreams too.”

He’s hunched over, blowing softly on a cup of tea that smelled somehow both sharp and cloying. Caius is also in possession of a cup of tea, and he can’t seem to take his eyes off it. It’s steaming quietly, warm against the tips of his fingers. They have been in the kitchen a good fifteen minutes, and nothing has happened.

603 wasn’t touching him. His eyes didn’t linger on him. Caius’s mind had been racing for a reason—any reason—for this calm, pointless conversation, for 603 to say so clearly that he wanted Caius to accompany him for bed only to bring him to the kitchen instead.

It might be the tea—something in the tea, that would make it go easier; but Caims has been sipping at it and has yet to feel any effect. He takes another sip, feeling the warmth roil in his stomach.

“Good dreams, Master?” He asks softly, head bent so that when he looks up to watch the synth’s reaction, it’s through his lashes.

603 blinks at his tea, and fails to notice.

“Indifferent dreams, I guess,” he says with a shrug. Something like a smirk flashes over his lips, and he adds, “One time I dreamt about a talking warp-rat who wanted to rule the Fourth Quadrant.”

Caius chokes on his fifth sip of tea, spraying it out of his nose and across the table in manner neither demure nor flirtatious.

“Sorry! Sorry, Master, I—“ he leans forward,thinking to wipe it up with his shirtsleeve, and sees that 603 is in the process of wiping some of the splatter off of himself. Wet spots are soaking into the synth’s shirt. Caius freezes, the tea twisting in his stomach like something alive, and malicious, and ready to bite.

 

  * * *



 

On second thought, maybe trying to make the kid laugh while he had a throatful of tea wasn’t the best idea 603 had ever had. In his defense, he hadn’t been trying to instigate a coughing fit.

Wiping absently at his sleeve, 603 is making his own slow way towards the words to assure Caius that no, it was not necessary to apologize for choking, when the boy’s apologies cut off sharply and he looks up to find him frozen, eyes fixated on the spat-up tea currently decorating 603’s shirt.

“Hey, kid. It’s fine.”

Caius flinches, head ducking down and shoulders rising up to his ears, breaths sharp and shallow.

603 swallows. “Hey,” he says, trying to every lingering scrap of roughness from his voice. “Hey, Caius. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Caius didn’t move, and 603 eased himself out of his chair, kneeling in front of the boy and pressing his palms over the too-still shoulders. He could feel Caius’s heartbeat reverberating through his bones.

“Hey, c’mon, kid. You’re not in trouble, nobody’s gonna hurt you, you got me?”

“Your shirt,” Caius says, and flinches again.

“It’ll dry. Not your fault.”

The kid nods, just a little too fast, looking more like he’s rushing to agree than like 603’s words have gone any distance towards reassuring him. 603 rubs his thumb over the boy’s shoulder helplessly, hating the way he could feel the bone, brittle and knobby, just beneath the skin.

It’s gonna take time. The fear, the wounds, the stick-thinness from the lack of feeding; it’ll all take time. 603 shoves his impatience back down into the dark, selfish pit it had risen from and stands up.

“Let’s get you another cup of tea,” he says, taking the coughed-in cup off the table, because tea never tastes quite right when it’s been in your mouth and out again. “You hungry?”

He’s about to walk away and pour the cup down the sink when Caius jerks, a short, aborted movement to grab at 603’s sleeve before he curls back into himself again.

“Please.”

Turning back, 603’s stomach tightens at the sight of Caius’s eyes, watery with unshed tears. “Can we just—can we do it now? I don’t think I can—I’m sorry, I might—“

There’s a scowl on 603’s face before he can think better of it, and he opens his mouth to tell the kid—again—that he isn’t about to be punished, or hurt, or whatever the ‘it’ the kid was referring to was, but Caius only flinched back a little further and rushed out,

“I can make it really good, I promise, I can—I know a lot, from—whatever you like, just, please, can we do it now?”

603’s stomach turned over itself once, twice, and settled slowly in its own private pool of liquid nitrogen, sending sharp chills up his shock-stiff spine. He was aware of the cup he was holding, aware of the crack as he held it too tight and the shattering sound as its pieces hit the floor. He was aware of Caius, jerking away from the noise, aware of the way the kid curled further in on himself every second 603 fails to come up with some kind of adequate reply, but he couldn’t get any words to come. Instead, his brain was rushing back, replaying the conversation that had landed them both here.

_I’m_ _going_ _back_ _to_ _bed_.

_Do_ _you_ _need_ _someone_ _to_ _accompany_ _you?_

Oh, damn it all to hell. He hadn’t mentioned anything about drinking tea, had he? He hadn’t explained a single thing. And the kid—the kid was three days free of a brothel.

“Hell,” he found himself saying, sounding a little strangled even to his own ears. “That’s not—you’re way too young for that kind of crap, kid. We’re not gonna—I’m not gonna do that.”

Caius uncurled just the tiniest bit to blink and look up at him, confusion plain on his face. 603 stared back.

He had a feeling neither of them was going to make sense of this anytime soon.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be up super soon! I felt like the ending to this one wasn’t super satisfying so I waited until I could publish them both in a row :)


	11. Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allow me to top of last chapter’s surfeit of angst with—yes! More angst! 
> 
> And a little comfort too, because hugs are needed things in the best of times.

When a little of the numbness in 603’s limbs finally faded, he looked down to brush some of the shards of shattered cup out of the way before he walked back to the table and sat down. He was a thousand times too tired to have a conversation like this; would much rather there was no conversation to be had, but Caius is staring at him like he’s grown a second head and announced a newfound taste for human flesh, so—conversation it is.  
“Tell me what you’re thinking, kid.”   
Caius stares at him a little more, then shakes himself slightly, like he’s trying to rid his skin of a crawling itch.   
“You—I thought you said,” Caius begins, “you wanted—company.”  
“To the kitchen,” 603 says, “For tea. I was thinking about sitting up for a while, here, so when you asked if I needed somebody to come along, I thought—well, I guess I wasn’t thinking.”   
He stops, not sure how to proceed, and rubs a hand over his face, starting over. “If I knew what you were offering, I’d never have taken you up on it, all right? I’m sorry I scared you. Made you think that.”   
Caius was still staring at him. Maybe he’d grown that second head, after all.

* *

It didn’t make sense, this pain in his chest. No sense at all.   
603 hasn’t hurt him. He hadn’t even been considering it. Caius had been convincing himself, more and more forcefully, that it would be all right—the skin, and the sweat, and the heavy weight of flesh pressing him down until he couldn’t breathe—it would be _all_ _right_ , because it had always been all right, before, in the brothel. Unpleasant, but not unbearable.   
And if 603 had just done it, gotten it over with, it would have been just fine. He could have handled it, and all would have been just the same as it always was, except better now, because however 603 used him, the synth was kind and gentle and Caius trusted him to never make it hurt on purpose.   
But he hadn’t, and now it wasn’t all right. It had never been all right, and Caius didn’t think it would be all right ever again. If someone tried to touch him like that, even once more, he wouldn’t be able to bear it. He would rather tear his skin off than feel those hands on him ever again; and it felt, just a little, like a part of him had fallen and shattered into as many pieces as the cup that would never be a cup again, still lying on the floor.   
The Albatross was a safe haven, as different from the brothel as the very stars were from dirt. But nothing was free, not even safety; and with the one skill he had slipped out of his grasp, Caius didn’t know how he could possibly earn his place here. Soon enough, he knew that 603 would have to realize just how useless he was.   
“Hey, kid,” the synth says, sounding almost worried. His hands are on Caius’s shoulders again, solid and warm and gentle. The soft contact is a surprise, and Caius sucks in a breath only to have it stick, solid as a stone, in his throat.   
The next breath is a sob, and he has just enough to time to realize he’s being unnecessarily hysterical before he starts crying.   
“Oh, hell,” 603 says over him, and Caius tries to stop, but only sobs harder. He expects a slap, something to knock him out of the fit, but 603 only pulls Caius in close to his chest, holding him there like something he doesn’t want to lose.   
“S’ok, kid. Just let it hurt, I’m not gonna let you go.”   
The words catch and stick in Caius’s chest, and he curls into the synth’s chest, accepting the kindness he knows he’s done absolutely nothing to deserve.   
_I’m_ _not_ _gonna_ _let_ _you_ _go_.   
Promises are flimsy, fragile, all but meaningless; just words that could change or disappear as quickly as the neon letters on an adboard.   
But 603 held him, seemingly careless of the fact that Caius was getting his shirt wet; and no matter how hard Caius sobbed—he did not let go.

* *

The more 603 thinks about it, the sicker he feels, and the sicker he feels, the less he feels any right to the still-lingering sense of shock.   
Caius is pressed into him, too-prominent ribs shaking with heavy, upset breaths, crying into 603’s shirt when it was 603 who’d gotten him so terrified in the first place. And 603, hypocrite that he is, can only hold him as though he’s got some right to offer comfort.   
It’s not like he didn’t know all along. He bought the boy from a damn brothel, but had been so busy thinking about the kid’s cut-up feet and obvious hunger—familiar, comfortable evils, things that 603 knew how to fix—that he hadn’t even bothered to think about what the kid would be expecting from him. Hadn’t bothered to take a second to explain.  
And now, Caius was shaking like 603 had finally deigned to tell him that the summary execution he’s been anticipating won’t be happening, after all, and it seems that 603 has to start talking to the kid a little more.   
In his arms, Caius draws another hiccuping breath, and 603 holds him closer on instinct.   
“S’ok, kid,” he says. “You’re gonna be okay.”  
This earns another whole-body shudder. Caius shakes his head, saying something too tear-filled and squeaky for 603 to interpret.   
“What’d you say?” He asks, bending his head lower.   
“It’s not okay,” Caius repeats, voice still warped by tears. “It’s not—I’m not useful, I have to—have to—“  
Every word seems to make the boy’s muscles grow tense, and he starts hiccuping again, struggling to catch a breath to finish out what he’d started to say.   
603 shoves away the heavy-stomached sickness that’s slowly trying to claw its way up his throat. It doesn’t matter right now; the boy in his arms does.   
“You don’t have to be useful.” His voice is oddly calm in his own ears. “Not here.   
Caius struggles to draw another breath, his words coming out in a rush.   
“You paid money for me, I’m eating your food,” he says. “You can’t—I have to work, and I can’t—can’t be—“ his air has run about again, but he’s still desperate to speak, his mouth moving noiselessly.   
“Hush, kid. Shhh.” 603 rubs the boy’s back, feeling more than a little useless. Can humans suffocate themselves just by crying too much?   
“You need to breathe, kid. Just take a breath, okay?”  
To his great relief, Caius listens, taking a breath, and then another, without trying to say anything more.   
Useful, he thinks. The—the _nerve_ of it, that this tiny, helpless human thought that he had to earn the right to just be kept alive. The _nerve_. The idea is so wrong that 603 has no idea how to argue it. Arnulf would probably know how—he’d probably say something concise and important-sounding about the divine duty of man to man, or inherent value in soulful creatures, or—something. But 603 can’t even begin to form an argument like that, and he’s not sure how much of an impression it would make on a scared kid anyway.   
What he does think of saying makes him hesitate, but only for a moment.   
“I bought you,” he says. “That makes you mine—mine to feed, and mine to protect, and mine to take care of. It’s not something you ever have to pay me back for, you got that? It’s my job now. I won’t stop if you’re not useful.”  
Caius takes another long, shaky breath, and then another. He doesn’t try to argue, though there’s a thoughtful frown on his face that makes 603 think he’d like to, maybe.   
603 just holds him a little closer, resting his chin on the boy’s head. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for the boy to believe him. He’ll prove it to the kid. He’ll feed him and protect him and keep him safe, and hope the rest of it heals on its own.   
It’s all he can do.

* *

Caius feels as though all of his panic has been wadded up into a ball and thrown to the side of his mind. It’s still there, making tiny crackling sounds as it tries to unfold itself, but it’s smaller now, less demanding, replaced in importance with the synth’s impossible, over-kind words.   
The last bit— _I_ _won’t_ _stop_ _if_ _you’re_ _not_ _useful_ —has to be a lie, or at the very least an exaggeration. Like some of the clients at the brothel, who’d say things like _I_ _love_ _you_ _so_ _much_ or _I’m_ _just_ _gonna_ _take_ _you_ _home_ _with_ _me_. It was possible 603 meant it, in his kindness, but meaning something and doing it weren’t the same thing. Caius was used to interpreting what people said into what they were likely to do. But _mine_ _to_ _feed_ , _mine_ _to_ _protect_ , is not so easily dismissed. It keeps rolling around in Caius’s head, distracting him from the wadded-up ball of latent panic.   
He thinks 603 means that—really means it. Perhaps that was simply what being a master meant to the synth; but it changed—dramatically—Caius’s knowledge of being a slave. Every master before had treated food and rest and protection almost as privileges, dispensed at their own discretion; but 603 seems bent on treating them—almost as responsibilities.   
603’s hand is rubbing his back, gentle and steady, and the synth’s chin comes down to rest softly on the top of Caius’s head, warm and dry and prickly with stubble. Caius feels drained and uncertain, loose in an unfamiliar world, but 603 has yet to let him go.   
For now, that is enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I’ll be working on the next chapter, so hopefully it will be up soon :) I love you guys!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


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